Carol Stream couple's fifth child in no mood to wait

In the seven years that he's driven a truck for UPS, Craig Ramirez never made a delivery like this.

Ramirez's fifth child, Amelia, was born at 4:12 a.m. Saturday. Ramirez delivered her himself, after the baby made it clear that she simply couldn't wait for her parents to drive to a hospital.

"It's still a little hard to believe," the happy 34-year-old Carol Stream resident said from his wife's room at Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield. "I just kind of tried to do what I'd seen our doctors do with our other kids."

Little Amelia is doing fine, as is her mother, Lisa Ramirez. Both plan to return home Monday.

Amelia's unusual arrival began shortly after 3 a.m. Saturday, when Lisa woke her husband up and said she was having contractions.

Neither one panicked, as they'd been through this four times before. They got up and calmly started preparing for a trip to the hospital.

"We actually both took showers," Craig Ramirez said.

Then, as Ramirez was getting things ready, he heard his wife call out. The baby was coming. Now.

"I just thought, 'What? There's no way!' But I called 911," he said.

Ramirez walked into the living room where his wife stood, leaning against a couch. It quickly became evident that Amelia was well on her way.

Ramirez started to guide his daughter into the world, with a 911 operator on the phone with him the whole time. In a matter of minutes, the baby was out and crying.

"I have no idea what I even said to the operator during that," Ramirez said, laughing. "Once she was out, I was able to focus a bit more."

The operator told Ramirez to wrap the baby in a towel to keep her warm, and to clean her face off. As he did, people started arriving at the house: Craig's mother, and local paramedics.

"When my mom arrived I told her that Lisa had already had the baby," Ramirez said. "She was stunned."

Craig and Lisa's four other children range in age from 7 years old to 22 months. Amelia is the couple's fourth girl.

"The whole thing was pretty amazing, but we're just so happy everything turned out fine. The baby's healthy, my wife's doing great.

"It's funny that I'm a UPS guy. I never thought I would deliver a baby."