All in a day’s work: Morris Township cop helps deliver baby

Patrolman Carmen Piccola with Paige Lipnick, who he helped deliver. Photo by Joshua Lipnick, Jan. 5, 2017.
Patrolman Carmen Piccola with Paige Lipnick, who he helped deliver. Photo by Joshua Lipnick, Jan. 5, 2017.
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Patrolman Carmen Piccola with Paige Lipnick, who he helped deliver. Photo by Joshua Lipnick, Jan. 5, 2017.
Patrolman Carmen Piccola with Paige Lipnick, who he helped deliver. Photo by Joshua Lipnick, Jan. 5, 2017.

Police don’t always find bad news on the other end of a 9-1-1 call.

For Patrolman Carmen Piccola on Thursday, the call resulted in a new resident that he personally delivered to Morris Township.

With help from paramedic Susan Steuber, the officer delivered a baby girl.

“It’s an amazing experience and a positive one,” said Piccola, an 18-year veteran of the force. “In a career that tends to have sadder circumstances, this is definitely a positive one.”

Capt. Robert Duffy said the Morris County Communications Center fielded the call about a woman in labor at 9:44 a.m. Piccola and Steuber arrived at the Strawberry Lane home to find Emily Lipnick, 36, “already crowning,” said Piccola.

Together, the team ushered a healthy Paige Lipnick into the world.

Piccola assisted with a delivery when he was a cop in training, and attended the births of his children, Daniela, 12, and C.J., 10. So he was fairly calm going into this, he said.

Still, he acknowledged a scary moment when Paige’s head emerged wrapped with the umbilical cord. Steuber quickly corrected the situation, the officer said.

The labor was moving so rapidly — the birth took about 10 minutes–that it’s a good thing nobody tried rushing Emily to the hospital, Piccola said. Otherwise, “the baby would have been born in a car.”

Mom, baby, and daddy Joshua were taken to Morristown Medical Center for evaluation by the Morris Minute Men with the hospital’s Mobile Intensive Care Unit. The Township fire department also Morris Township police logoassisted at the scene, helping prepare delivery instruments, Piccola said.  This was the Lipnicks’ second child, he said.

The officer praised Emily for “a job well done,” without benefit of painkillers.

“Mom did 99 percent of the work,” Piccola said. ” Women have been doing this for thousands of years, without doctors or police.”

 

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