When many of us think about everyday heroes, our thoughts first go to first responders. Firefighters, paramedics, and policeman are out there every day and they have the opportunity to be heroes regularly.
Sometimes, even a first responder will go above and beyond and that is what Meghan Warfield did. The 30-year-old firefighter from Maryland may have been off duty, but she stood up and did the right thing on this day.
Meghan is a firefighter who is trained to respond to a variety of issues that may occur. On this particular day, she was involved in a multi-car crash and it wasn’t long before she went from victim to first responder.
Even though she was only hours away from giving birth and was nine months pregnant, she jumped out of her vehicle and began to direct traffic. She had been a passenger in one of the other vehicles at the time but was unharmed.
As she was directing traffic, she looked at one of the cars that had overturned on the roadway. She saw that there was a woman trapped underneath and she was badly injured.
Despite her injuries, the woman was still alive and conscious. Warfield said: “I started to climb in [the car] with her, but then I was like, ‘What are you doing? You’re nine months pregnant.”
She knew that the first responders would arrive soon so she tried to stabilize the victim. She said: “I ended up holding onto her to keep her in place because I wasn’t sure of her injuries at the time. It was also important that I keep her calm. It was a pretty traumatic event.”
During the time that she was helping, she also realized that she was going into labor. She had cramps that were increasing in intensity and she knew it would soon be time to give birth.
“I don’t know how I did what I did because the cramping was so bad. I must’ve just been running on adrenaline.”
The paramedics soon arrived and she allowed them to do their work. They extracted the victim from the vehicle and took her to a hospital. Six different people from the accident were taken to hospitals and none of them experienced life-threatening injuries.
It was also then that Warfield ended up in the hospital. She was at John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and the doctors told her that she had gone into labor due to the accident. It also caused her baby to be sideways in the womb, presenting some challenges.
Fortunately, less than 24 hours later, she had a baby girl who was 100% healthy. Baby Charlotte is now a part of the family along with her older sister, Ellie, and older brother, Jamison.
She has been hailed by the local volunteer fire rescue service as a hero and many people have gone on to comment about what she did that day.