Ballymena police officers reunited with very special delivery!

A ROUTINE traffic patrol in the early hours of October 9th quickly became anything but for two police officers turned by circumstance into ad hoc midwives.

And, almost exactly a month later, both officers have been reunited with the young family they raced to aid on that cold and rainy night.

Constables Campbell and Lavery were on duty on the Raceview Road when they were approached by a running man expressing an urgent need for immediate help, dispersing the quiet calm of what had hitherto, in the words of the former, been ‘a very mundane night shift’ with ‘very little happening’.

It was around half three in the morning, typically a ‘slow time’, when the anxious man revealed that he was in fact an expectant father- and his wife was in the advanced stages of childbirth in a nearby car.

Even after two years’ service within the ranks of the PSNI, PC Campbell told the BBC this week that the unexpected scenario took them both entirely by surprise.

“I think, obviously, you maybe worry somebody has had a breakdown or somebody needs help,” he reflected, “but certainly not that his wife is in labour.

"It's not something that happens, that I've heard of before. A lot of people who have been in the police for years have never experienced it."

And the urgency of the situation was immediately apparent! By the time the officers had reached the car, the father-to-be was informing them that the baby was already well on the way.

A delicate and potentially dangerous process even in the most ideal of conditions, the weather-beaten Raceview Road between Ballymena and Broughshane - described by Constable Campbell as a ‘very exposed piece of road’ that ‘wasn’t a particularly nice place to be that time of night’ - hardly qualified as an ideal environment for childbirth.

But, on this occasion, there was no alternative. Life had other plans!

A father-of-one who had enlisted in the PSNI in May 2025, Constable Lavery had nothing but admiration and praise for the extraordinary effort and resilience of the mother who ‘had basically already delivered the baby in the back of the car’.

“She had been absolutely amazing,” he added.

PC Campbell echoed those sentiments, stating that ‘mum did all the hard work’.

"There was absolutely no hesitation,” he recollected.

“She lifted the baby up and made sure the baby was okay."

All too aware of the hazards posed by the adverse conditions to both mother and child, PC Lavery reached for the only insulation he had to hand - a high-viz jacket he collected from the patrol car - and draped it over the two of them as an improvised blanket.

The speed at which events had unfolded meant that they had to scrap plans to drive the family to the nearest hospital and instead they enlisted the capable and better-equipped hands of the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service.

As a dad himself, PC Lavery was particularly anxious of the risks associated with such an unusual birth, checking repeatedly with PC Campbell that the infant showed the typical signs of good health.

"We needed that baby to cry," he explained. "And then my colleague said the baby had cried, which was good news, but the worry moved on to mum."

Thankfully, just short of a month on from that eventful night, the circumstances surrounding the reunion were far less stressful for all involved.

"It was great to go back and see that everybody was doing well," said PC Campbell.

"He's just so small and dainty and good to get a cuddle off him," Lavery added.

The two officers also seized the opportunity to pose for a photograph with baby Benedyct, a fitting souvenir to accompany an extraordinary story - doubtlessly one to be told with lively enthusiasm each October for many birthdays to come!

A night that had started with an entirely unremarkable deployment instead became the focal point for an unforgettable memory etched into the minds of the two men who found themselves thrust into an emergency no law enforcement training could have braced them for.

“I hope it's not a situation I have to probably be in again,” Lavery understatedly remarked.

“It's the one I'll always remember,” Campbell added.

“It's probably one most people would remember!”