PETALING JAYA — A 15-year-old has emerged as the country’s youngest midwife, earning plaudits for delivering a baby just outside the lobby of the Sunway Pyramid shopping mall in Bandar Sunway to the amazement of onlookers.
Lee Shirley brought the newborn into the world with the help of three other girls who happened to be walking past the small landing space that became an open-air “labour room’’ at 4pm on Tuesday. The baby may be named Kee Sun Way, his father Foo Ming said.
Shirlley told Malay Mail yesterday she understood the process of delivering a baby from YouTube videos she had watched among other medical procedures to feed her love for medicine.
“I watched ‘One born every minute’ when I was about 10 years old. This piqued my interest to watch ER and also source for medicine-related articles online,” she said.
The drama unfolded about 2pm when Shirley was heading towards the Sunway International School where she is a 10th-grader. She saw Seow Hui Jun, 35, in obvious distress.
“I asked her if she was feeling alright and she told me that she was feeling labour pains,” she said, adding contractions began immediately.
Just then, 18-year-olds Wee Tai May and Farhana Mohd Fadzli, happened to walk past and inquired if they could help.
Foo Ming, 40, and relatives, who had come from Seremban for shopping and sightseeing, called for an ambulance but the baby would not wait.
While Wee and Farhana, both undergraduates at Sunway College, fanned Seow with the cardboard mounting boards, staff of nearby Italian restaurant, Capriciossa, brought several tablecloths which they turned into a curtain to ensure privacy for Seow.
“Suddenly, I saw the baby’s head and told Seow to push as I had seen medical personnel do in the videos. After a few pushes, the baby was born about 4pm,” Shirley said.
To their shock, the baby was not breathing and almost purple.
Farhana told Shirley to pat the infant’s back until he began to cry as she had read in an article some time back.
“Thankfully, the baby started crying and we were all relieved,” the A-Level student said.
But there was trouble looming as there was nothing to use to cut the umbilical cord.
Seow’s relatives asked Wong Hui Yu, 19, who was passing if they could borrow something to tie the umbilical cord.
Wong, an A-Levels student at Taylor’s College tried to use her hair tie but it was not strong enough for the purpose forcing Shirley to use her shoelace.
“The shoelace did the trick until the ambulance arrived at 4.30pm,” said Wong.
Paramedics cut the umblical cord and took mother and baby to the University Malaya Medical Centre for treatment.
