On November 14, 2011, a Myrtle Beach firefighter responded to a 911 call that would forever change his life.
Marc Hadden, a firefighter, had saved many lives as a police officer and firefighter, but that fateful day, he gave birth to his first child.
A woman called 911 complaining of severe abdominal pain, but it turned out to be more serious when he got to the scene—the woman was about to give birth.
“She struggled from the minute she was put in my hands,” recalled Marc.
He administered oxygen to the baby, just seconds after it was born. 2-oz. Baby can breathe on her own.
Marc said hearing her cry was “amazing.” At the time, he never imagined he would be taking the baby girl home just 48 hours later as her father.
Marc and Beth had already two boys named Will or Parker. They had been trying for a child for many years but couldn’t conceive. Marc reached out to them, having already considered adopting a child.
At the hospital, the infant’s mother revealed she couldn’t care for her newborn baby girl. Marc felt the need for her father at that moment.
Marc called Beth that day and Beth recalls receiving a call. He told her, “I delivered a baby.” She jokingly responded, “Can we keep her?”
“I think she might be going up for adoption,” Marc said.
Beth felt compelled by the news that Beth’s birth mother was a single mother struggling to raise her son and to visit her at the hospital the next day.
“My heart just went out to this woman,” Beth recalled. “I brought her a little prayer book and asked I could get anything for her.”
The doctor came in to inform the mom that they were ready to go ahead with the adoption. It was then that she turned to Beth and said, “I can’t give my baby to someone I’ve never met.”
“Suddenly the opportunity was there for me to say that Marc and I had been praying about adoption for years,” Beth said. “And she looked over at me and said, ‘I want you to adopt my baby.”
The birth mother had the nurse bring the baby in, and that’s when Beth held the infant for the first time. She called Marc and said, “I think we just had a baby.”
Beth said Rebecca Grace, who they named Rebecca Grace after the girl she prayed for, was exactly what she hoped for.
Marc and Beth had already signed temporary-custody papers by the end that day. They brought Gracie home just 48 hours after she was born.
The couple made sure that Gracie knew where she was from. They’ve told her everything from day one, and Marc has even taken her to the back of the ambulance where she was delivered so that she knows.
As for Gracie, she loves telling everyone about her birth story, telling her friends that she is a “celebrity.”
“My daddy delivered me in the back of an ambulance [and] helped me take my first breath,” she’ll say.
“Being able to help her take her first breath is the most incredible thing I’ve been a part of in 28 years as a police officer and 16 years as a firefighter,” Marc said of Gracie’s birth. “I feel so honored to have been there at that time.”
Gracie enjoys wearing bows and tutus. She’s also into sports and loves practicing gymnastics and karate with her brothers. Marc said she is protective of her brothers and has a love-hate relation with them like most siblings.
“Sometimes the best things in life happen in the blink of an eye — and you can’t let them pass you by,” Beth said.
That’s exactly what the couple did, and their lives were changed forever!
Watch this family’s heartwarming adoption story in the video below.
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