There are birth stories. And then there is the story of baby Jimmy.
On the night of March 4, under the glow of a full moon and the dim light of an open car door, Tayla Cicolini and her partner, Jack Pyle, welcomed their son into the world. No hospital. No midwife. Just a towel, a phone call to Triple Zero, and a moment that none of them will ever forget.
Jimmy arrived at 11.20 pm, a day earlier than expected, and a whole lot faster than anyone could have planned for.
“We’re Going to Have to Burn the Car”
Tayla and Jack live on a farm, more than an hour from Goulburn Valley. When contractions started around 9.50 pm, they both knew they needed to move – fast.
“The contractions were already so intense,” Tayla said. “From the first and second contraction, not even two minutes apart, we got in the car and baby Jimmy was born within an hour.”
The couple had half-joked about this exact scenario. Their daughter Dottie had arrived quickly two years earlier, and they’d laughed about history repeating itself. Tayla had even fretted about the new car.
“I was like, I don’t wanna have him in the car, we’re going to have to burn it,” she said.
But there was no laughing when Jack felt the urgency shift. He pulled over on the side of a quiet country road near Tallygaroopna in Victoria. Tayla felt the baby’s head, and suddenly she was kneeling on a towel on the side of the road in the dark.
They called the hospital. The midwife told them to call 000. RIGHT NOW.
The Voice That Held Them Together
Emergency communications officer Monet Stitt-Jones had been a Triple Zero call-taker for less than 12 months when she answered that call. She heard “we’re having a baby” and didn’t miss a beat.
Monet had helped guide another couple through a birth before, and at that point, she became exactly what Tayla and Jack needed in that moment – steady, clear, and calm.
“We need to now lay her on her back, get her in the centre of that towel, and I’m going to tell you how to deliver the baby,” Monet told Jack.
“Apply some pressure to the head to stop the baby from delivering too fast… support its head and shoulders… the baby will be slippery, so don’t drop it.”
Jack listened. And he delivered his son.
It’s more common than you might think. Triple Zero Victoria’s call-takers assisted with 17 births in just the first three months of this year – because sometimes babies simply don’t wait. In 2024-25, Triple Zero Victoria answered close to 3.1 million calls – that’s a call every 10.2 seconds. Behind those numbers are moments exactly like this one.
A Rare One in 80,000 En Caul Birth
And then came the part that made this birth truly extraordinary.
Baby Jimmy arrived en caul – still entirely enclosed inside his amniotic sac. It’s one of the rarest things that can happen during childbirth. An en caul birth occurs in fewer than 1 in 80,000 deliveries, and most delivery doctors and midwives will never witness one in their entire careers.
To see it happen on the side of a country road, in the middle of the night, with a farmer dad and a Triple Zero call-taker as the only support – well … that’s something else entirely.
Jack, guided by Monet and driven by instinct, did what needed to be done.
“I kind of just ripped into it with my hands,” he said simply.
And then – the sound they’d all been holding their breath for.
Baby Jimmy cried.
“It was incredible and such a relief hearing the first cry,” Tayla, Jack and Monet all said.
“How Nice Was That?”
Ambulance Victoria MICA paramedics Jeremy Lia and Stephanie Sewell arrived shortly after midnight to find a healthy mum and baby on the roadside, cold but safe. They wrapped them up, got them into a warm ambulance, and took a moment to appreciate what they’d just walked into.
MICA paramedics typically respond to the most serious, highest-pressure emergencies. A healthy baby on a moonlit roadside was something different.
“We left this case going ‘how nice was that?'” Jeremy said. “The nice cases are something we often miss out on as MICA paramedics, so it was very special.”
The Woman Who Finally Got to Meet Jimmy
On April 20, six weeks after that extraordinary night, Monet Stitt-Jones got to do something Triple Zero call-takers rarely get to do.
She met the family she helped.
She met Jimmy.
“This is a first for me, and actually just seeing Jimmy in the flesh, it really is something else from the crying I heard on the phone,” she said. “We don’t usually meet the people we help.”
For Jack, looking back on that night on the roadside – the full moon, the towel, the phone pressed to his ear, his son arriving in the most unexpected way imaginable – there’s only gratitude.
“Looking back now, it couldn’t have worked out any better, and just quite grateful that we had the Triple Zero team there to get us through.”
Baby Jimmy. Born en caul. Born under a full moon. Born on the side of a country road at midnight – and already, at six weeks old, the owner of the best birth story in the room.
“Being part of their son’s safe arrival is something I’ll carry with me forever,” Monet said.
We think she’s earned that.
