Firefighter Adopts Baby Girl He Delivered
South Carolina firefighter Marc Hadden is the proud dad of three kids, including a 6-year-old named Rebecca Grace. But Rebecca came into his family's life in a way no one would have expected, after he delivered her while on the job.
Hadden opened up to People in the magazine's latest issue about the day that changed his life. On November 14, 2011, he responded to a 911 call from a woman who was having abdominal pains. When he arrived, he ended up delivering a baby for the first time in his life. He had to give emergency oxygen to the baby girl until she could breathe on her own. "She struggled from the minute she was put in my hands," Marc said. "It was amazing to hear her cry."
When he got the baby to the hospital, her birth mother said she couldn't take care of the baby, as she was a single mother to a teenager already. As it turned out, Marc and his wife, Beth, had been looking to adopt for years, after dealing with complications during the births of their two sons. Marc joked that he'd like to throw his hat in the ring to adopt the baby - but he wasn't really kidding.
Beth and Marc visited the birth mother at the hospital. "My heart just went out to this woman," Beth said. "I brought her a little prayer book and asked I could get anything for her." A doctor walked in to start talking about adoption, and the birth mother said she couldn't give her child up to someone she had never met.
"Suddenly the opportunity was there for me to say that Marc and I had been praying about adoption for years," she told the magazine. "And she looked over at me and said, 'I want you to adopt my baby.' [... ] I called Marc and said, 'I think we just had a baby.'"
Now, Rebecca Grace, who goes by Gracie, knows the full story about how she ended up with her mom and dad. She loves tutus and gymnastics, and can easily keep up with her brothers' jokes.
"Every day I look forward to waking her up, getting her ready for school, then picking her up later on," Marc told CNN. "I am living the best days of my life. She contributed to all of our lives."
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