Dad delivers city’s first 2012 baby on floor of bathroom

A CITY couple are celebrating the arrival of their baby boy who became the second Scots child born in 2012 when he was delivered on his parents’ bathroom floor.

Paul Fleming delivered his son Joseph after his wife Nikki went into labour unexpectedly just before the New Year bells.

Ambulance staff talked him through the process while paramedics rushed to their home in Colinton.

Nikki had been due to give birth on January 12 but went into labour at 11.30pm on Hogmanay. The baby’s head appeared and Paul called the ambulance.

“It’s not what you bank on – delivering your son three minutes after midnight on Hogmanay,” said Paul.

“He was our first-footer.”

Paul was on the phone to control centre staff for the 33 minutes it took to deliver his son. He said: “It was surreal – but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world. When I realised the baby’s head was there I got panicky, but then something kicked in and I thought ‘Let’s man up and get through it’.

“In the end I was really calm. I followed the advice I was getting from the ambulance service. The baby came out fairly quickly and I cleared the mouth and nose and unhooked the cord from his neck.

“He looked nice and pink and I wrapped him in a towel and put him beside his mum, so everything seemed fine.

“But I was glad when the paramedics arrived.”

Nikki and baby Joseph, who is 6lbs 2oz, were taken to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for a check-up and were able to return home later yesterday.

Paul and Nikki, who both work for RBS, already have a two-year-old daughter, Lauren, who slept through her brother’s arrival. Paramedics arrived 20 minutes later, shortly after a neighbour had run over to the house after his daughter, a doctor, contacted him.

The neighbour arrived to find mum, dad, and their new son calm and doing well.

Joseph narrowly missed out on becoming Scotland’s first child in the new year as Margaret Adam gave birth to her daughter one minute earlier at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow.

Macey Lily Duncan was the first child delivered by staff at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and was welcomed by mum Melissa Howieson and dad Keith Duncan at 12.35am.

The first baby born on New Year’s Day at St John’s Hospital in Livingston was Daniel Soanes.

Mum and dad Melanie and Ray, from Broxburn, West Lothian, welcomed their son into the world after he was delivered at 1.29am.

Elsewhere, the baby girls of two women from the same road in Clackmannanshire were both among the first children of 2012.

Just 42 minutes after the bells, Samina Ghafoor, from Tullibody gave birth to Elizah Fatima Mayo, weighing 10lb 8oz, at Forth Valley Royal Hospital.

Then the family of the second baby born at Forth Valley Royal Hospital was delivered at 02:34, when neighbour Michelle Clark gave birth to Peyton Louise Clark Piper.