When firefighter Marc Hadden was dispatched to a woman in distress, he had no idea the path he was about to take.
The experienced firefighter had been on numerous calls, but this was his first 911 call after a woman called for assistance complaining of abdominal pain.
The father of two from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was delivering his first child.
“You can talk about how cool it would be to deliver a baby, until it actually happens,” Marc told Inside Edition.
Marc and his wife Beth, a teacher, had two sons and planned to add a daughter to their family until doctors told them they couldn’t.
“My wife was basically told to wrap it up, that any further pregnancies could cause complications for her and the potential baby,” he told Inside Edition.
They had considered adoption, but the cost was prohibitively expensive.
He had no idea that a routine call to assist in the delivery of a baby would turn out to be the best day of their lives.
On November 14, 2011, Marc arrived on the scene and quickly realized the woman’s stomach pains were contractions, but there wasn’t enough time to get her to the hospital.
The firefighter assisted in the delivery of the baby girl, whom the mother named Gracie. He remembers the special moment and how he was involved in the baby’s first moments.
“Can we keep her?”
“I was tasked with everything to do with Gracie… I helped her take her first breath,” he added.
When Marc called his wife to tell her he had just given birth to a baby girl, Beth joked, “Can we keep her?”
They had no idea that their dream would become a reality just 48 hours later.
The couple soon discovered that the mother was a single mother who was already struggling to raise a teenage son. Beth cared about the woman and went to see her the next day in the hospital.
“My heart just went out to this woman,” said Beth, 39, who works as an instructional coach at the local elementary school.
“I brought her a little prayer book and asked if I could get anything for her,” she told People.
As the two women sat and got to know each other, a doctor came in and informed the baby’s mother that the adoption was ready to proceed. The women appeared upset that a stranger would be taking their daughter, which prompted Beth to speak up.
“Suddenly the opportunity was there for me to say that Marc and I had been praying about adoption for years,” she told People. “And she looked over at me and said, ‘I want you to adopt my baby.’
“She had the nurse bring her in and I was able to hold Gracie for the first time. I called Marc and said, ‘I think we just had a baby.’”
Marc and his wife had signed temporary custody papers and were bringing her home just hours after assisting the woman in safely delivering her baby girl. Rebecca Grace was her given name, but her nickname is Gracie.
They compared the experience to “winning the lottery,” but they weren’t expecting a baby girl so soon. Thankfully, the community stepped up to assist with the mountain of supplies and clothing required for a newborn.
Marc stated that he was unable to open his door due to the baby supplies that friends, family, and coworkers had left at their door.
There is no doubt that Hadden’s life has changed in the five years since.
“I love my boys more than life itself but Gracie has me wrapped around her fingers. There’s no doubt about it.”
“We have this bond that I think supersedes even other father-daughter relationships. We’re as thick as thieves. “