Cool-headed Flanders boy, 13, helps deliver a baby

A quick-thinking Riverhead Middle School student is being hailed as a hero by Southampton Town police for helping his aunt deliver a baby in the family’s Flanders home on Friday morning as a police dispatcher guided him through the process.

Yet to hear it from Miguel Dominguez, 13, it was really no big deal.

The modest young man was in his bedroom drawing Friday morning when he heard his mother scream out. Then he heard his pregnant aunt screaming in the bathroom.

“We had to take her out [of the bathroom] because we thought the baby was coming,” said Miguel, the oldest of four kids.

His mom, a Spanish speaker, told him to call 911.

On the other end of the line was Southampton police dispatcher Christopher Brenner.

“The officer told me I had to take care of my aunt.”

Officer Brenner instructed Miguel to get a towel, and then asked the boy to determine whether or not his aunt was crowning yet.

She was.

Meanwhile, Southampton police officer James Cavanagh was en route to the East St. home.

“It was actually like an ordinary call — a female having some contraction pains,” Officer Cavanagh told The Riverhead News Review. He reached the property and told Miguel’s mother, who answered the door, that an ambulance was on its way.

He looked into the living room and “at that point it was literally an active birth happening.”

He could hear his friend and fellow officer, Mr. Brenner, on the phone with Miguel — giving him instructions, which the boy would relay in Spanish to his mother.

“He was telling the child to secure the umbilical cord,” Mr. Cavanagh said.

“So I ran back to my car to let the ambulance know that there’s an active birth happening, and grab my medical equipment.”

By the time he returned, “the baby was wrapped in a blanket.”

It was a healthy baby boy.

Moments later, a Flanders Northampton Volunteer ambulance crew arrived on the scene and got right to work.

Mr. Cavanagh said Miguel was the key conduit between the dispatcher and the boy’s mother.

“It takes a lot of courage, and he did an excellent job,” the officer said. “They’re the real heroes — between the woman giving birth, her sister, the boy and our dispatcher, they did all the work.”

It’s not the first time Mr. Cavanagh has responded to the scene of an active birth incident like this one.

“It can be tough, but it’s a beautiful thing.”

He said Miguel was completely cool under all the pressure.

“He was just talking [to dispatch] like it was nothing to him. It was pretty impressive.”

Asked whether he was scared, Miguel said he wasn’t.

“I’ve done this before,” he replied.

Miguel went through a similar experience with another relative who went into labor early and gave birth at home several years ago.