[chris]

Dispatcher Angi Adams helped a Pierson, Michigan, couple deliver a surprise baby at home after Ryan Emmons called 911 just after 2:30 a.m. on April 16, 2009, to report that his wife, Carri, was in labor though they said they had no idea she was pregnant.

Adams, 36, took the call at Montcalm County Central Dispatch. She had finished her training two days earlier and was working one of her first solo shifts when Emmons, 32, came on the line unsure what was happening to his wife.

"What do you mean you think?" Adams asked after Emmons said he thought Carri was having a baby, according to accounts of the call. With the nearest paramedics about 20 miles away, Adams stayed on the phone for roughly 11 minutes, walking the couple through clearing the newborn's airway with a towel and tying off the umbilical cord.

Carri Emmons, 27, delivered a boy in the family's bathtub. The baby was quiet at first, worrying his father, before he began to respond normally. He weighed 9 pounds 9 ounces, and both mother and baby were reported in good health. The couple named him William Gerald Emmons.

The birth followed a vasectomy Ryan Emmons had undergone six years earlier, after the couple's first three children, Tyler, Dylan and Alexia, were born. He had not returned for a follow-up sperm test after the procedure.

Doctors said the vasectomy had failed through recanalization, in which the sealed vas deferens spontaneously reconnects. Dr. Daniel Williams, an assistant professor of urology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the complication occurs in fewer than 1 percent of vasectomies and its cause is not well understood. He said patients are advised to submit two clear semen samples, a month apart starting three months after surgery, to confirm the procedure worked.