ew York City police officers complain a lot about their jobs (who doesn't?) but they also claim to take a lot of satisfaction in their work. And there's no part of that work more satisfying than saving lives. And there's nothing more satisfying than saving a baby's life.

In the month of March, there were two separate and exemplary such incidents. The babies' names were Nacir Walker and Nicholas Brodie, and the cops' Brian Sheehy and Edgar Louis-Juste. These are their stories:

he waters of New York Harbor off Staten Island were still frigid on March 23 when a crazed father, clutching eight-month-old Nacir in his arms, tried to drown himself and the baby with him. While on patrol, Officer Sheehy, 29, of the 120 Pct. witnessed the incident and lost no time in reacting. He dropped his gun belt, plunged into the harbor from the dock east of Edgewater St., and swam out to the screaming child, who was floating on his back about 20 feet from shore. Raising the child above his head, the cop used his one free arm to swim back to safety. The father, who had brutally beaten the child's mother a few hours earlier, drowned. Both baby and rescuer were in good condition after being treated for exposure at St. Vincent's Hospital.

"I'm just happy he's okay," said the officer's wife, Susan, who is pregnant with the couple's first child. I was worried but then they told me he was a hero."

he trouble started for one-year-old Nicholas on the morning of March 28 when a piece of orange got stuck in his throat as his nanny was feeding him breakfast at the child's upper East Side Manhattan home. The boy gagged and stopped breathing, and when the nanny's initial attempts to revive him failed, she grabbed him in her arms and raced to the street for help. As she tried to cross Second Avenue, she was struck by a van, and that's when P.O. Louis-Juste sprang into action.

"I heard a thud," said Louis-Juste, 41, of the 19th Pct. "I heard someone crying, ‘Help me! Help the baby! The baby's dying!'" In seconds, the cop, who was trained in CPR while serving with the U.S. Marines and in the Police Academy, was in the back seat of an SUV speeding toward the hospital and applying the life-saving technique to the child's back.

"You're not going to leave me," Louis-Juste pleaded with the child. "You're going to come back to me."

Finally, the baby coughed and a piece of orange peel fell into the cop's hand. The child's color returned and he blinked and whimpered. "Thank you, thank you," the cop responded. "Having kids myself, I would have wanted to die (if the child had not survived). I don't think I could handle that."

There are other heroes in this story — most notably the child's nanny, Gracelyn Niles, who, oblivious to her own pain from legs crushed in the accident, pleaded with the officer to ignore her and save the child. And then there was Danny Rivera, a retired cop who was chatting with Louis-Juste when the accident occurred and drove the SUV that transported the cop and child to the hospital.

For the officers, of course, baby-saving is all in a day's work. In January, the PBA honored P.O.s Victor Matos and Maria Franco of the 33 Pct. for a September incident in which they preserved the life of a 10-month-old girl in a stroller who had been stabbed by a deranged stranger. And don't forget Police Officer George Schkarnikow, apparently the record-holder. According to NYPD historians, he saved three infants' lives by resuscitation between 1931 and 1938.