Harrison baby couldn't wait as mom delivers on Highland Park Bridge with help from EMS crew

Harrison mother-to-be Caitlin Fox knew her baby was coming fast.

“It was about 7 a.m., and things started getting real,” Fox said, of the morning of May 9. “I started understanding that this was happening now, and I needed to get my butt to the hospital.”

In a Citizens Hose ambulance, halfway across the Highland Park Bridge traveling to West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, Cambria Raye Gustin made an exciting entrance into the world.

“We got to the bridge and she crowned. There was no going back,” said Fox, 28. “In a speeding ambulance in the middle of the bridge, I pushed twice and she flew out.”

Cambria was born about 8 a.m., weighing 5 pounds, 7 ounces.

Fox and her husband, Eric Gustin, also have a daughter, Layla, a kindergartner at Highlands Early Childhood Center.

In the days after Cambria’s exhilarating birth, Fox thanked the Citizens EMS crew of Brian Gouza, Cody Spann and Jim Erb.

“They were insanely helpful,” she said. “They just kept telling me to squeeze their hand, and I was screaming my head off.”

Laughing, Erb said, “It was slightly intense.”

He was driving the ambulance while Guza and Spann oversaw the delivery.

“You want to get in the back and help, but you got to keep moving and get to the hospital,” Erb said. “Ironically, I hadn’t delivered a baby in 20 years on the job. And now, in the last year or so, we’ve done three.”

Fox, a Penn-Trafford High School graduate, has lived in Natrona Heights for nearly 10 years.

The morning of the unscheduled delivery, Eric Gustin was already in Grove City at work. Fox went about her morning routine of getting Layla ready for school but pain started to overcome her.

“The contractions were minutes apart, but I didn’t want to scare my daughter,” Fox said. “I managed to, not so coherently, text (Eric) to go to West Penn, and I got 911 on the phone. It quickly got to a point where I thought, ‘OK. I’m having a baby in my house.’

“God bless the dispatcher because I was really screaming. I was trying to breathe through it and talk to my belly, telling her to just wait a bit longer.”

The family members are enjoying their early days together at their home off Saxonburg Road, and the experience is something they’ll remember for a lifetime.

“I’ve been through pain but, man, was this on a different planet,” she said. “The whole thing has me feeling pretty empowered.”