COM student helps woman in labor at Saco ice cream shop

Few first-year medical students get to attend to an emergency medical situation, but, when Biddeford resident Morgan Redmond went into labor at a popular Saco ice cream parlor, Jadin James (D.O., ’24) jumped into action.

James was fresh out of class and waiting for a group of friends at the Saco Scoop on Sept. 17. Still wearing her UNE scrubs, she was midway through ordering her favorite flavor, cookie dough, when Redmond’s water broke.

“This lady came in shouting, ‘I think my daughter’s water is breaking!’ The worker stumbled and said to me, ‘I’m sorry, what was it that you wanted?’ I responded, ‘I can’t just stand here and order!’”

A decade-long emergency medical technician and firefighter of five years, James had the experience necessary to attend to Redmond, who was six days past her delivery due date. James said she was shocked when Redmond told her she planned to walk home and wait for her husband before going to the hospital.

“I asked her, ‘How far away do you live?” James said. “She told me, ‘Oh, about a mile,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, no, you’re coming with me.’”

James transported Redmond home so she could wait for her husband, Kris, to go with her to the hospital. Minutes later, baby Onyx was born.

“I'm not so sure how she made it to the hospital,” James exclaimed.

Unbeknownst to her, this was not the first chaotic delivery in which James has partaken.

“I called my mom to tell her what happened and she started laughing, and I asked why,” James said.

James explained that, when her own mother went into labor, her father was absent. Her mother frantically knocked on a neighbor’s door, and that neighbor took her to the hospital, where James was born.

“She told me told me that it was my job to pay that gesture forward,” James said. “So, I got Onyx a card to tell him that, when he grows up, he has to help some random pregnant woman and pass on this really weird tradition.”

James was overjoyed at the experience, which she said helped to humanize her medical studies.

“Because there is relatively limited patient interaction in the first two years of medical school, and you’re studying really intently, you sometimes lose sight of what you’re really there for,” James said. “Something like this experience really puts it into perspective that, ultimately, there are people behind what you’re learning.

“We all went into medical school to help people,” she continued. “And I know that, if I had not been there and my friends were, any one of them would have done the exact same thing.”