3 Malabon cops save mother, newborn son

Three young policemen saved the lives of a woman who gave birth right on the sidewalk early yesterday in Malabon City.

Both mother and son are safe at a hospital where they were taken. Unfortunately, they have nowhere to go.

PO2 Rommel Habig, officer-on-case and one of the rescuers, identified the mother as Margarita Olita, 25, with no permanent address.

Habig said an unidentified "neighbor" of the woman on General Luna street near City Hall and just across the police station came rushing in at around 5 a.m. yesterday telling them that a woman has given birth on the sidewalk.

Habig wasted no time and called PO2s Herminio Taborada and George Causing to bring the police mobile personnel carrier to the scene.

There, the officers saw the newborn child and the mother, in grime and slime, sprawled on the cold pavement, the exposed umbilical cord still binding them.

The officers quickly went to work and carried mother and child, rushing them to the Pagamutang Bayan ng Malabon on Dagat-dagatan Avenue.

Upon reaching the hospital, medical personnel immediately cut the cord binding the mother and son while still in the vehicle to prevent infection.

The baby, who weighed 3.3 pounds, was her fifth. She and her partner Artemio Mosquite, 29, a fish porter, have been living together for some eight years.

Mosquite was not around when the mother felt the labor pains as he was at the nearby Consignacion Market working.

Habig said this was a wandering family that had no home to call their own. He said they have been living like this for the longest time now, sleeping and staying wherever fatigue overtook them.