KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A mother ran into complications while giving birth at her home in Kansas City, Missouri. But her birth team had no luck dialing 911.
She said it took her father calling police across state lines in Kansas to get first responders to arrive.
Missouri Supreme Court rules abortion amendment to stay on November ballot The family is now spending a lot of time at Overland Park Regional Medical center where the newborn is in neo-natal intensive care.
“Every time I have to leave him here, it’s like I’m ripping my heart out,” mom, Devin Brown said.
Wells Brown is still in the NICU at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.
After complications during an at home birth, they called 911. Brown said they nearly died while waiting for help.
“We felt desperate, like we were both going to die,” Brown said. “This is like the scariest moment of our entire lives, and we just felt like no one was there.”
After a traumatic birth with her first, Brown decided to have baby Wells at home in Kansas City, Missouri.
They experienced complications. Wells got stuck and didn’t receive oxygen for more than six minutes, she said.
The midwife’s assistant called 911 three times, and they were put on hold each time, according to Brown.
Her father in Overland Park, Kansas, called police there.
The Johnson County Emergency Communications Center said their team then alerted Kansas City Fire.
“They were brought by Overland Park paramedics because we could never get ahold of them,” Brown said.
Brown said in the meantime, Wells was not breathing.
They started doing compressions on her newborn son. She said they waited 17 minutes for emergency responders to arrive.
Brown was hemorrhaging and lost more than a liter of blood.
She said they almost died.
Missing: KCPD searching for missing 17-year-old boy “We were begging for help. My son’s literally lifeless on the ground, I’m bleeding out and nobody’s there,” Brown said, “What do we do? This is our worst nightmare and 911 isn’t there.”
Mid-America Regional Council Coordinates the 911 system KCPD uses.
According to MARC, in August, the Kansas City Police Department’s average 911 wait time was 51 seconds. It clocked the longest at more than 13 minutes.
KCPD’s longest non-emergent wait time in August was nearly 1 hour and 48 minutes,
“Emergency response,” dad Chris Brown said, “For it to be unavailable, unreliable, is just such a hopeless feeling. The 17 minutes it took until someone got there, it felt like years.”
Kansas City Police said there are 95 call taker and dispatcher positions with 25 vacancies.
Police said 13 people are in training.
Mayor Quinton Lucas addressed what he called the “911 hold time crisis” at Tuesday’s Board of Police Commissioner’s meeting.
“I know it’s not convincing to everyone, but we need to get around our staffing concerns. I’m heartened by what I’ve heard today in terms of getting more staffing, getting them through the training process,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said.
“I appreciated this from the chief. we’re going to look at every technological solution possible. I think near the end we got close to one, which is that, you know, if every dispatcher is busy, is there some way we have a good back up plan that isn’t just that pregnant mother waiting, that isn’t just somebody being terrified that there’s no one there.”
Opening date for new Overland Park sports complex announced Brown said Wells is a warrior and continues to fight every day in the NICU. She said he sustained brain damage from the time he was without oxygen.
Wells now weighs more than 10 pounds. They’re hoping to start oral feeding soon.
Brown said they have a long road ahead. They don’t know when Wells will be able to come home.
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