Junee paramedic Jimmy Connors vividly remembers the moment he was holding the baby he had just delivered and the back doors of the ambulance opened onto Wagga Base Hospital's ambulance bay.
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It was September 27, the day Opal Lee Lane-King was born, and she had arrived just before they made it to hospital.
Brisbane mum Maryjane King was visiting her grandmother in Junee with her family last month when she felt what she thought were Braxton Hicks contractions in the middle of the night.
At about 1am, Miss King's mother called an ambulance and Mr Connors and his colleague Tim Morgan confirmed she was in labour at just 31 weeks pregnant.
"We were planning on leaving that morning at about 5am, but Opal ended up coming out at 1.55am," she said.
"She wasn't due until November 25, so she's not even due now."
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Mr Connors said when they set off on the 30 minute drive to Wagga that he was confident they were going to make it in time.
But baby Opal couldn't wait the extra 30 minutes.
"My recollection of the birth is basically arriving at Wagga Base Hospital in the ambulance bay, then the ambulance stopping, and then Maryjane's waters breaking and then the baby being delivered into my arms," he said.
"The [memory] that really sticks with me is I'm holding the baby up with both my hands and the back door of the ambulance opens with the hospital staff there."
Opal's father, Shaun Lane, who accompanied Miss King in the ambulance said the birth was over in two contractions.
"My partner reckons as we were reversing into the bay at Wagga Base Hospital, it was one contraction, water was broken and then second contraction she was out," Miss King said.
"Do I have to call her an ambulance baby?"
Opal stayed at Wagga Base Hospital for a few weeks before she was transported by Medivac back to Brisbane.
She's still in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Mater Hospital, but is close to going home for the first time.
"She's almost six weeks old now and it's still sinking in," Miss King said.
"My mum is a Wagga baby and she is over the moon that I chose to have the baby in Wagga."
Mr Connors said his first ambulance birth went as smoothly as possible.
"The way I would describe it is just being a cog in the machine. from the dispatches, the call takers, my partner who was driving really well to the hospital staff at Wagga Base," he said.
"It just felt really good to be a cog in that machine."
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