‘I delivered Jesus’: Collinsville firefighters aid in birth of ‘miracle baby’

Two Collinsville firefighters will probably always remember baby Jesus’ delivery.

It’s still fresh in firefighter and paramedic Chris Castens’ memory.

Just last month, Stacey Whitson, 39, realized she was going into labor, and asked her teenage son called 911. The Hollywood Heights fire department receiving the call determined it needed assistance. Castens and his partner Daniel Gulledge responded about 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 25. And things were moving quickly.

Whitson’s water had broken and her contractions were less than three minutes apart by the time the ambulance left her home in Caseyville.

“As my partner’s calling Memorial Hospital, we noticed the baby started crowning — that’s what we call it when the head starts coming out. So that’s when he hung up the phone. ... Daniel, my partner, he actually had patient care. He was supposed to be the head guy, but he was getting some equipment out when the baby actually started coming out, so I was back there.

“I caught him,” Castens said. It was just before 1 a.m.

Whitson remembers only needing to push once in the delivery. “The baby almost shot out like a football,” she said.

Her baby wasn’t due for another week, on March 3, but “he couldn’t wait for nothing at all.”

“It just happened so quick,” Whitson said. “... Had they been maybe another five minutes, it would have been too late. Me and my 13-year-old would have had to deliver (him).”

The baby was healthy after a smooth birth, Castens said. The firefighters didn’t keep in touch with the family, but Castens said they searched for Whitson online to check on them.

“We looked on her Facebook page a couple days afterward. There was a picture of the baby. And she actually named the baby Jesus. So I delivered Jesus,” he said, laughing.

The baby’s name is DaCorrione, but Whitson said everybody calls him Jesus, a nickname she gave him because he’s her “miracle baby.”

She didn’t find out about Jesus until she was six months along because doctors had misdiagnosed her pregnancy as the flu.

Whitson insisted it was not a virus, so she was given an ultrasound.

“I was like, ‘That’s a grown man,’” she said of seeing him for the first time. “That’s why I call him baby Jesus; he was determined to make it here.”

He turned 1 month old on Friday.

“...We go through so much negativity,” Castens said of paramedics. “We see death. We see injuries. We see so much bad stuff — heroin overdoses lately. And it’s finally good to have a positive outcome,” Castens said. “Keeps you going a little longer.”

Castens said the ambulance was minutes from the Belleville hospital when Jesus was delivered.

“They opened the door and the nurses came and grabbed the baby. It was kind of surreal at first,” Castens said. “I thought I would be more nervous. But we both did what we had to do.”

Castens, 37, is not unfamiliar with births. He has two children of his own, and in his medic classes, he learned from watching a few deliveries, he said.

“It was — I don’t know how to explain it — it was totally different. There was a level of stress, maybe a little bit of anxiety, but we stayed calm,” Castens said of Jesus’ delivery.

He was relieved that there were no complications with the birth, which Castens said happens often.

“We hear so much stuff in the field; most births are not normal,” he said. A baby’s arm or leg can come out first during delivery instead of the head, or the umbilical cord can get wrapped around a baby’s neck.

“Thank God he came out kicking and screaming,” Castens said of Jesus.

Gulledge and Castens did some brushing up on emergency deliveries, reading a standard operating procedures book in the ambulance, on their way to Whitson’s home, which is out of Collinsville’s response area.

Castens said it “definitely helped.”

“You don’t see this stuff every day,” he said.

Castens was praised by Assistant Fire Chief Dale Kyrouac, as well as the City Council during its Monday night meeting. He was given a letter of commendation and a blue stork pin, representing his efforts in safely delivering a baby boy.

During the meeting, Kyrouac described the controlled environment that a soon-to-be-mother can typically expect in a delivery room.

“But on the morning of Feb. 25, one mother did not have that same luxury of a nice room and a warm hospital bed surrounded by doctors and nurses,” Kyrouac said.

He emphasized that, instead, she had “two of Collinsville’s finest firefighters and paramedics” by her side to ensure her safety and the safety of her baby.

Also honored during the meeting was Gulledge, who was not able to attend the presentation, as well as Collinsville police officer Michael Bauer, who recently pulled a man from a burning building.

Mayor John Miller thanked all of the first responders for their work each day. He said he knew first hand how Castens and Gulledge felt after the delivery, which he called “the experience of a lifetime.”

“I can tell you,” Miller said, “because I experienced it twice when I was on the job,” in his tenure with the Collinsville Fire Department prior to serving on the City Council. One of the babies Miller helped deliver is now 35 years old, he said during the meeting. “She, too, was out of district — in a snow storm.”

Miller said the firefighters won’t forget baby Jesus any time soon.

Castens’ wife and mother attended the meeting with him and said they are both proud of him. He has 14 years of experience under his belt as a firefighter — seven years in Alton and another seven in Collinsville. His wife points out that he also has experience from his days in the Marines crash fire rescue.

And now he’s got his first stork pin.

Whitson said her baby Jesus is doing well and that he likes to sleep. “All he does is sleep,” she said.

Jesus’ siblings, brothers who are 13 and 9 and a 6-year-old sister, can’t get enough of him.

“I just about have to pay to keep them out of his face,” Whitson said.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 12:41 PM with the headline "‘I delivered Jesus’: Collinsville firefighters aid in birth of ‘miracle baby’."