Vivien Overall was at the right place at the right time. 

On April 29, she was supporting her team at the screening station at the front entrance of the Misericordia Community Hospital when a man rushed inside saying his wife was giving birth in their vehicle parked in the passenger drop-off zone.

Vivien, who had been a midwife in the United Kingdom and subsequently a labour and delivery ward nurse at the Misericordia for over 20 years and is now a medication management consultant with Covenant Heath, says she didn’t quite believe him at first. In her experience, when people say the baby is coming, they actually have more time than they think.  

She was wrong. The man’s wife was, indeed, giving birth in the car. 

“The baby’s head was coming out along with its hand, but the mum was very calm,” says Vivien, who delivered the baby in less than five minutes. 

At 6:56 a.m., Jennie and Eyad Seifeldin became parents to a healthy baby boy, whom they named Remo. For Vivien, the experience reminded her of her former career, one that saw her delivering “thousands and thousands” of babies. 

Jennie says she was able to remain calm because Vivien herself was calm and assertive and knew what she was doing. Vivien sent Eyad to get a wheelchair while staying with Jennie to help deliver her baby.

After Vivien cut the umbilical cord, both Jennie and her newborn were wheeled upstairs to the maternity ward, accompanied by an obstetrician and labour and delivery nurse. The parents were given masks to wear when they entered the hospital. 

Jennie, a nurse in the intensive care unit at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, initially had concerns about having a baby in any hospital during the pandemic, but her anxiety dissipated with this birth, since she and Remo were discharged the next day without any complications. 

“It was quick, and I wouldn’t have changed a thing,” says Jennie, who had been in labour for 26 hours when her daughter was born two years ago.  

“It all happened for a reason, and it went the way it was supposed to go,” says Jennie. “Vivien being there was a blessing. She’s an angel.” 

For Vivien, it was a prayer answered, and she says she was touched by a spiritual moment that she shared with the family after the baby was born.