A mother in Nebraska is mourning the death of her newborn child, which she delivered months early.

She says after delivering her baby at home, she called 911 multiple times but couldn’t get through.

The child wasn’t breathing and ultimately died.

It’s not clear what the outcome would have been if dispatchers had responded, but the family is demanding answers on why the mother couldn’t get through.

“I said. ‘Call 911,’ and she said, ‘I’m calling but I keep getting a busy signal,'” mother Joanna Coddington said.

Coddington says she called 911 three times after delivering her baby girl at home three months early.

When she couldn’t get through, she called her mom at work.

“My mom answered, and I told her that I gave birth to the baby and she wasn’t breathing,” Coddington said.

Grandmother Theresa Kerby raced home, twice more calling 911–this time from her phone.

Not getting through, they got in their car and drove to the closest emergency room.

There were more than 15 minutes of a busy signal from the 911 center.

“Nobody knows what the possibilities are if 911 could have come, but the end result is the same and that’s that baby angel’s not with us,” Kerby said.

Douglas County 911 Director Dave Sleeter says the dispatchers were overwhelmed with up to four times the normal amount of calls, most non-emergency–reporting fireworks complaints.

“That just infuriated me because real emergencies, of life and death, were not able to get through,” Kerby said.

But the 911 center says the carriers are the issue.

Sleeter says there’s a certain number of connections from each cell phone provider, and if they’re all full, the user gets a busy signal.

“There’s a possibility if they could have got to her soon enough, there’s a possibility she could have been here, but I’ll never know,” Coddington said.

The family’s wireless carrier did not respond to a request for comment on the story.

The county’s 911 director says authorities are working to improve the system.

That includes setting up a non-emergency number so that 911 circuits don’t get overloaded with calls that are not true emergencies.

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