Eagan woman gives birth on bathroom floor with an assist from younger sister

Feeling her contractions at an increasingly rapid clip and just steps from the back door of her Eagan home, Angela Reinders realized it was too late.

The baby was coming, and it was going to happen right there on the bathroom floor.

And in the role of doctor, a 21-year-old college student with CPR as her lone medical credential and a sheriff's dispatcher relaying instructions over the phone.

Ten minutes later, Margaret Josephine Reinders entered the world in the hands of her aunt, Melisa Sturman.

"It was quite a dramatic entrance for my daughter," said Angela Reinders, 31, now a mother of two after the excitement early Saturday.

"I was four steps from the back door" and heading to the car that husband Michael had warmed up, Reinders said Tuesday.

Then, "I thought, 'Something doesn't feel right,' " she continued. "'I need to stay put, and maybe things will slow down.' "

With sheriff's dispatcher Matt Ausmus on the phone to Sturman and giving instructions, the whole shebang couldn't have gone more smoothly.

"I had my legs on the door frame, gave a couple of pushes and the baby was out," Reinders said.

Maggie, as she is called, weighed 8 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 21 inches at birth, which occurred at 4:38 a.m.

"The real heroes are the sister and the dispatcher," said Eagan police spokeswoman Desiree Schroepfer.

Sturman said the dispatcher's guidance during Maggie's arrival "gave me clarity and directed me without me thinking. I mean, I was thinking, but I haven't delivered a baby before."

Any thought to changing majors or career plans?

No, not likely, Sturman said, adding, "I have a friend who's a midwife, and she said I could be an honorary midwife."