Aquinnah’s newest resident was delivered at 11:48 p.m. on Sept. 1 as his parents Kyle Colter and Sophia Welch were on the phone with emergency dispatch. The mother and child were soon after brought to Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, where Aquinnah town administrator Jeffrey Madison said they were resting and doing well. Ms. Welch is Mr. Madison’s assistant in town hall.

Dukes County Sheriff’s telecommunicator James Grillo received a 911 call for a woman in labor just before midnight, according to the Dukes County Sheriff’s Office, and guided the parents-to-be through the labor process. Tri-Town Ambulance and Aquinnah Police further assisted the family upon arrival.

On the call, Mr. Grillo went through a of series emergency medical dispatch questions, taking the caller through the process of labor.

“Any time the 911 phone rings, we've got to switch on,” he said, explaining that a woman in labor takes the call “from a hundred to a thousand, because now we don’t have just one life at stake, we have two.”

Mr. Grillo talked the father through the labor process, while his partner at the station sent out the ambulance dispatch.

“It’s always a team effort,” he said. “To hear the baby crying in the backround was that fist pump moment where we were like, ‘Alright we’re good, we got that, time to focus on mom.”

All dispatchers are trained to give medical instructions over the phone, Communications Center director Susan Schofield Schofield said. Dispatchers take a 32-hour course and then 12 hours of continuing education annually.

“We also require they perform regular scenario training,” she said, noting that this is the first time a birth has occurred while an Island dispatcher was still on the line before an ambulance arrived.