 North Winnipeg resident Heather Richard was unaware that she was pregnant and thought she was having bad menstrual cramps and a bowel movement when she released her son Isaiah (pictured) into a toilet. Fortunately police were already on scene at her home for an unrelated matter, the officers got the boy breathing properly after pulling him out of the toilet. (QMI)
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WINNIPEG -- When little Isaiah grows up to tell tales, he'll have a good one about the freezing December day he entered the world but almost didn't live to talk about it.
Three days after his unexpected arrival, the newborn is healthy but still in hospital as doctors monitor his progress, his mom Heather Richard said.
Recovering at home, Richard, 32, is the one telling the strange tale, which has garnered international attention.
She didn't know she was pregnant and didn't know she was delivering a baby as she squatted over a toilet in her family's Flora Avenue home Sunday afternoon.
She mistook the intense labour pains for menstrual cramps or something else.
"I kept getting the urge to push and just thought it was a real bad bowel movement," she said.
In an odd twist and example of fortunate timing, two police officers who knocked on the door as Richard gave birth revived the unresponsive child.
Literally and figuratively, they were there for Richard, who was wanted on a warrant.
"I'm kind of glad they came to arrest me because, if they didn't, where would my son be?" Richard said yesterday. "I'm still trying to comprehend that I have a baby."
Isaiah, weighing almost five pounds, sustained a slight skull fracture when his head hit the toilet but suffered no brain injury and will heal, Richard said.
Richard and her boyfriend are overwhelmed but excited about her first child, given the fact a doctor previously told her she was incapable of having one.
Believing the grim opinion to be true, this is the reason why she didn't realize she was pregnant for nine months and three days, she said.
The attention from local and international media outlets, however, is embarrassing, she said.
Her ordeal began Saturday night when she unknowingly went into labour. The pain intensified and she delivered Isaiah into the toilet Sunday about 1:40 p.m.
She thought she was staring at her intestines until the submerged boy's leg twitched.
Realizing it was a baby, she began to scream, drawing the attention of relatives in the living room. Everyone was frozen with shock.
Luckily, the officers came knocking at that very moment. Once they realized the situation, they rushed to the bathroom, where the female officer pulled the baby from the bowl, put it on the counter and performed CPR for about five minutes. Isaiah began to breathe and wail, bringing a sense of relief.
"I started crying with him because I knew then and there he was going to make it," Richard said.
chris.kitching@sunmedia.ca
