The birth of a baby at a downtown restaurant late last month has given a whole new meaning to the slogan "we deliver."

Melissa Layne's baby was not due for another week, so she thought those little pains she was having the morning of Oct. 30 were Braxton-Hicks pains, the little "practice" twitches that mothers-to-be have in the last days of their pregnancy.

"I got up and got my daughter, Sierra, off to school," Layne said. "But the pains got worse and I called the doctor's office. They didn't seem concerned and told me to keep my appointment I had for 1 o'clock that afternoon."

Still worried, Layne called her parents, who live down the street. They called an ambulance. When paramedic Sandy Baker and EMT Judy Morgan walked through the door, Layne's water broke.

Morgan and Baker helped her into an ambulance and away they went, not to Cabell-Huntington Hospital in Huntington, W.Va., where the baby was supposed to be born, but to Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital in Russell, Ky., which is closer.

"But things happened so quickly," Morgan said. "We didn't make it to the hospital."

The trip to OLBH was preempted when Layne and the emergency service personnel discovered the baby wasn't waiting around for any trip across the bridge.

"We pulled into The End Zone lot and, like, two minutes later, there he was," Layne said.

Ethan Keith Edward Layne weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces and was 20 and 1/4 inches long. The labor, start to finish, was approximately two hours. It was a far cry from her first delivery.

"With my daughter, I was in labor for a couple days and they had to induce it to begin with," Layne said. "But everybody was great, the paramedics were great. They came to see him the next day," Layne said. "When we got to the hospital, everybody there knew about what happened. Even the security guard (at the hospital) came by to see him."

"It was beautiful," Morgan said. "I can't describe it. It's just not something we do every day." Neither Morgan nor Baker had ever delivered a baby before.

Childbirth is taught as part of EMT and paramedic's training, according to SEOEMS Executive Director Eric Kuhn, but the training is not put into practice very often.

"Obviously, the best thing is to get to the hospital," Kuhn said. "But babies often have their own time frame."

Later in the day, Morgan and Baker returned to The End Zone and told the restaurant staff what had transpired that morning.

"I couldn't believe it," End Zone server Stephanie Martin said. " We were in the middle of opening the store and we saw the cop car and the ambulance, but we didn't think anything about it. I think it's awesome."

Manager Ann Haynes said for a while, the restaurant announced the birth on its marquee with the humorous slogan "we deliver."