Cape Town - Crunching numbers is her forte. But earlier this week, a Table View bookkeeper had to swop her calculator and spreadsheets for a set of towels to help deliver her domestic worker’s baby.
Shara Engelbrecht, 39, was quickly finishing her breakfast to rush off to a meeting when her domestic worker, Colleen Arends, 36, came out of the bathroom complaining about back pain.
The two had known each other for almost five years. Before Arends started to work for her in April, she had been helping out at Engelbrecht’s in-laws’ home.
Arends, who lives in Kraaifontein, was working her last day before going on maternity leave on Monday. She had been due to give birth in two weeks’ time by Caesarean section as her baby was in a breech position.
“She came out crying that her back was sore. You could see that she was in agony, but neither of us knew that the baby was ready to come out. The last time she went for a check up she was told that the baby is breeched.”
Arends had also not yet prepared an overnight emergency bag for a possible early arrival.
She said: “It wasn’t time for the baby to come.”
Engelbrecht, a mother of two, said her children were born through C-section delivery so she had no idea what a normal delivery was like and had not felt labour pains before.
She said she tried rubbing Arends’s back, but to no avail. It was when Arends pulled her pants down to her knees and went on all fours that panic struck.
“Colleen kept crying. I called my mother for directions to Karl Bremer hospital. In my head she had just started labour so I thought we still had time to get her to a hospital.”
A few minutes later, Arends’s pain had increased. She told Engelbrecht that she could “feel the baby coming”.
“I dropped the call with my mom, hoping she would call the ambulance. I then laid some towels on the floor. In my head she was going to lie there until help arrived.”
Engelbrecht’s plan was ruined when Arends started feeling the need to push.
“As she was pushing, I tried pulling the baby out, like I see on television, but the head was stuck. I told her to try to lie on her sideand within seconds the baby was out.”
Baby Azarie Arends was born weighing 3.8kg.
According to Engelbrecht, the delivery took about 15 minutes.
“It was just so overwhelming, as soon as I held that baby I was able to relax.”
The baby’s mother said she still could not believe that she delivered Azarie at her workplace.
“I have two older children and none of those deliveries turned out to be as dramatic as this one. I thought my baby was going to die.”
Soon after the delivery, Arends was rushed by ambulance to Karl Bremer Hospital.
Arends said she was looking forward to being with her little one and would be returning to work in January.
zodidi.dano@inl.co.za
Cape Argus