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Woman names baby after officer who helped with delivery on the side of a highway: 'She was an angel'

Officer Sierra Reprogal visits Bridgette Crumley and the baby she helped to deliver. (Photo: Facebook)
Officer Sierra Reprogal visits Bridgette Crumley and the baby she helped to deliver. (Photo: Facebook)

A woman in Tennessee named her newborn after a police officer who helped her deliver the baby.

Bridgette Crumley didn’t feel that there was a reason to rush when she felt a few labor pains before packing up the car with her husband, Bryan, and heading toward the hospital on Tuesday morning. Little did the couple from Dickson, Tenn., know that they had less time than they anticipated before the baby would come.

“As my contractions got about five minutes apart, I knew it wouldn’t be long,” Crumley tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “We got onto interstate exit 172, and the baby started to crown. I could see the head, so my husband called 911.”

Officers from the Dickson Police Department met the couple, who were accompanied by her 3-year-old son, Bryce Rister, and Crumley’s mother-in-law on Highway 46 near a car dealership. Even as the family approached the patrol car, Crumley admits she was so scared about what might happen that she and her mother-in-law had begun to pray.

Moments later, Crumley connected with her “angel,” Officer Sierra Reprogal.

“By the time that officer Sierra came to my side of the van, she looked at me and looked at the baby coming out. She caught little Isabella without hesitation,” Crumley says. “There is no telling what would have been the outcome if she didn’t show up.”

EMS then arrived to ensure that Crumley and her newborn were transported to the hospital safely. Reprogral accompanied the family, however, and stayed by the mother’s side for about an hour.

It wasn’t until Reprogal left that the parents filled out the birth certificate and decided to adjust their daughter’s intended name, Isabella Marie Crumley, to include a tribute to the officer.

“My husband asked me if I would like to, and I was actually thinking the same thing,” Crumley says of their decision to name their little girl Isabella Sierra-Marie Crumley. When Reprogal heard, Crumley said, “she was literally in tears.”

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