GRANDPARENTS’ DUTIES usually extend to babysitting or gift-giving, but Claire O’Driscoll from east Cork went further than most with her latest favour yesterday as she delivered her daughter Sinéad’s second child in the back of a car on a roundabout outside a maternity hospital.
Claire O’Driscoll was asleep at her home in Ballymacoda at 3am yesterday when she got a call from her son-in-law Austin O’Donoghue to say his wife was going to hospital straight away to have their second child.
Claire had promised Sinéad (30) she would be with her at the delivery, so she rushed to be at her side en route to Cork University Maternity Hospital.
Sinéad wasn’t due for another week and had gone on maternity leave from her job at Tesco in Youghal last week.
Speaking to Cork’s 96FM yesterday, Claire explained how the drama unfolded:
“We got as far as Carrigtwohill and she got a really bad pain there. I jumped into the back seat of the car and rubbed her back and whatever. The next thing we were going up to the Wilton roundabout and she said ‘Mam, I have got to push.’ There and then the delivery came. The waters just went and the baby came with it. She was beautiful.
“It was the experience of a lifetime. It happened on the Wilton roundabout , so we nearly got there.”
Claire said she wasn’t “nervous until afterwards”. They hadn’t even stopped the car when her daughter delivered baby Siobhán, who weighed in at 6lb 14oz.
“We hadn’t time to stop the car. We just kept going. We got to the hospital, and nurses and everything were outside the door waiting for us.
“They came in and I jumped back into the front seat of the car and they cut the cord and took away the baby. They took the mother away as well. Then we decided that was it and collapsed.”
Sinéad and baby Siobhán were deemed fit and healthy yesterday and were expected to be discharged from hospital last night or early this morning.
The family live in Knockadoon in Ballymacoda, east Cork, around the corner from grandmother Claire, who works as a carer for the Health Service Executive.
Claire (49), a grandmother of eight, said she was proud to have delivered a healthy baby.
OLIVIA KELLEHER