Special delivery
Mechanic aids in birth at his 'full service' station
Some people can spend years searching for a good mechanic. Sonya Julia Moiseyeva found one yesterday the instant she was born, when her mother gave birth inside a minivan with the aid of the owner of a Getty gas station on Route 9 in Newton.
The parents of the 6-pound, 13-ounce newborn pulled their
"Somewhere in the car on the road, I felt the urge to push," Tatyana Moiseyeva, 31, recalled yesterday, speaking to reporters at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The blushing mother held the 19-inch-long Sonya, dressed in a grease-free pink hooded jumper.
The mother of two smiled for cameras and recounted her second and most unusual delivery.
Her contractions had begun at home in Medfield at 4:30 a.m. A doctor did not return her early-morning phone call, and contractions began coming more frequently. She and her husband, Alex Moiseyeva , called a relative to pick up their 3-year-old son, Peter, and waited until he was cared for before getting in the car for the trip to the hospital.
Tatyana Moiseyeva's water broke as her husband drove toward the hospital. The pain became too much.
"My husband said, 'Don't push,' " she recalled. "I said, 'Ehhh?' "
Alex Moiseyeva quickly pulled into the Getty on Route 9, where he sometimes buys gas. He ran into the station and yelled in a shaky voice that his wife was giving birth.
Rafet Elananzeh , 42, who has owned the station for 12 years with his brother, said in a phone interview that he dialed 911, then tried to hand the telephone to Alex Moiseyeva, thinking the expectant father would talk to the dispatcher.
But Moiseyeva had a hard time talking and was not responding to the dispatcher's directions or questions, according to his wife and a recording of the 911 call provided by Newton police.
Elananzeh, who lives in Lexington, had been in the delivery room for the births of his 5-year-old son, Amir , and his 2-year-old daughter, Lilah . He decided to step in.
At the direction of the 911 operator, Elananzeh, with portable phone in hand, ran into the bitter cold to check on the mother and saw that she had already begun to give birth underneath a coat.
Following the dispatcher's instructions, Elananzeh pulled a clean rag from his pocket and wiped clean the baby's mouth and nose.
Near the end of the recording of the 911 call, Sonya can be heard letting out her first wail.
"It's good that [she's] crying," dispatcher Daniel Costa tells a relieved Elananzeh. "Congratulations."
The mechanic does not hesitate.
"Thank you," Elananzeh says.
He used the mother's coat to keep the baby warm, and an ambulance roared into the station a few minutes later. Mother and child were rushed to Beth Israel Deaconess.
"It's amazing," Elananzeh said in a telephone interview yesterday. "There is nothing like seeing a new life."
But he could not resist a pun.
"We used to deliver gas and antifreeze, but today we added a whole new meaning to delivery service," he said.
"We added babies to that list."
From her hospital room, Tatyana Moiseyeva couldn't argue.
"He helped," she said as she cradled Sonya against her stomach.
