Montco officer thrown into duty delivering a baby

Matt Cubbler has had an adventurous career as a federal air marshal, Army veteran of the Gulf war, and SWAT team member.

But the 41-year-old Collegeville police officer was not prepared for the call that came at the end of his overnight shift Thursday.

Cubbler had just turned off his police-car computer around 6:30 a.m. when a 911 dispatch directed him to respond to the parking lot of a TD Bank on Second Avenue. A woman was in labor.

When Cubbler arrived, the woman, whom police did not identify, was moments from giving birth. Her daughter, 4, and a son, 6, were buckled in their child seats in the back of her vehicle.

Cubbler acted quickly to move the children into the back of his police car and promised he would take good care of their mother. He could hear the sirens of approaching ambulances.

He returned to the car to see the baby's head appearing and knelt beside the woman.

"Look at me," Cubbler said to her. "I am not the face of the man you want to deliver your child."

Her response, he said, was, "You are all I've got."

Then she pushed.

The father of two, who described himself as a "great back-rubber and hand-holder" - but not an obstetrician - suddenly found himself holding the baby's head and then its shoulders.

Cubbler yelled for the Trappe Ambulance paramedics, who had just pulled into the parking lot to hurry over.

Paramedics Matt Byrd and Clint Tichnell arrived at his side just in time. With another big push, the seven-pound, seven-ounce baby boy was born two weeks early, Cubbler said. Moments later, Fire Chief Paul Giannini, an emergency delivery veteran, arrived to help cut the cord and finish the delivery.

The woman, who was in labor only a short time, was transported to Pottstown Hospital.

Cubbler called the experience both "cool" and "intense." He followed up with a phone call to find out both that mother and baby were doing fine.

"It was the gentlemanly thing to do," he said.