Mom, baby return to thank Dumfries rescue crews who delivered child

DUMFRIES — With her daughter in a passenger seat about to give birth, Jena Smith drove her truck the wrong way up Route 1.

She had one hand on the wheel and the other holding a cell phone. She was on the phone with Prince William County’s 911 center, where a dispatcher told her to do anything she could to get around the stalled traffic.

“I was screaming out of my window, ‘I’m coming,’ I get out of the way!” said Smith. “They told me that they would tell the police I was driving on the wrong side of the road if one tried to pull me over.”

Frantic, she was trying to get her 28-year-old daughter, Kasey, from their home in Stafford to Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center in Woodbridge. With Kasey in labor about 9 p.m., when she got on Interstate 95 north, traffic appeared to be moving well.

But, by the time they reached back gate of Quantico Marine Corps Base, it was a sea of brake lights, she said. That’s when she pulled off the highway onto Route 1, and they found it to be just as congested.

She called both 911 and Sentara and asked to send an ambulance. Neither were able to send help.

“God brought to my memory that there was a fire station ahead, so that’s where we went,” said Smith.

They pulled into Dumfries Volunteer Fire Department Station 3. Kasey got out of the truck laid down in bay where the fire engines are parked just inside the overhead door. Within five minutes of arriving,  Kasey gave birth ago Journee Janette, a 7 pound, 6-ounce girl, at 9:50 p.m. Thursday, April 17, 2019.

On Wednesday, with a healthy baby in her arms, she and her mother went back to Dumfries to thank the volunteers and medics to who helped deliver her child. She gave them sweet treats and coffee, and they gave her a pink “onesie” with the county’s fire and rescue department logo.

“I don’t have any more words to say, other than ‘thank you,’ thank you,’ thank you,” said Kasey.

After Journee was born, medics from Dumfries took the mother and child to Stafford Hospital, where the two remained for the next day and a half. Interestingly enough, both Kasey and her work as medical nursing assistants.

“See, you got this, you’re nurse, you didn’t even need us,” said rescue personnel gathered at the firehouse to greet the newborn and family. Everyone in the room laughed at the light-hearted joke.

However, the team of medics that consisted of Lt. Coco Francois and Lt. Robert Moreau who delivered Journee said there were some “tense moments” as shortly after the child was born. Her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, and it took longer than usual for the newborn to start breathing.

Eventually, she did, which put rescue crews — not to mention mom and grandmother — at ease.

“This was one of those moments you hear about, and you train for, and it actually happened,” said Moreau.

This was his first baby delivery. For Francois, it was her sixth. She’s also delivered another child since Journee, for a grand career total of seven children.

Both agreed that a fire station is only second to a hospital as one of the safest places for someone to give birth.

Fire and rescue crews said the congestion on I-95 and Route 1 that night was most likely caused by construction. None of them were called to an incident on either road that night, they said.