Published on 9/5/2009
under Stories
- by Gracie Murano
- 141,941 views
Thanks to our reader, Nana, who sent us the idea!
Born in a tree
It sounds like the birth story of an ancient goddess, but it's true. Ms Cheindza was near term in 2000 when flood waters raged through her town in Mozambique. She climbed a tree to escape the crocodile-infested waters and stayed there for four days with nothing to drink or eat. Finally on the fourth day, her baby came. Soon after, helicopters arrived to winch the mother and the baby, Rosita, to safety. Her umbilical cord was still attached when she winched to safety by a South African helicopter crew. Her 26-year-old mother, torn by labour pains as she clutched the branches where she had sought refuge, was exhausted and near the end when rescuers discovered her precarious perch.
(Link 1 | Link 2)
Born in McDonald's (the mother didn't know she was pregnant)
A baby was born in a Washington State McDonald's restroom and the mother didn't know she was pregnant. Most mothers have months to prepare for a child, but Danille Miller had just minutes.
Miller was working the nightshift at the McDonald's in Vancouver, Washington when she suddenly ran into the restroom feeling ill. Her co-worker, Jaynae Herrera ran in after her. Herrera asked if Miller was okay but something was definitely not normal. Miller was in pain and shaking. And to her shock, she was giving birth to a baby, right over the toilet.
Jaynae called 9-1-1 and with the assistance of a dispatcher, helped deliver the baby. One of the first things the dispatcher said to do when the baby was delivered was to get the baby out of the toilet. Miller had a six-pound baby boy and named him Austin.
As if birth wasn't a hard enough way to enter the world, try surviving, then falling through a toilet and onto moving train tracks. That's the tale mother Bhuri Kalbi of Rajasthan, India, will have to tell her daughter. Kalbi was only seven months pregnant and on a train's toilet when she gave birth early. She fainted before she realized what had happened. "My delivery was so sudden," Bhuri Kalbi told Reuters. "I did not even realize that my child had slipped from the hole in the toilet." According to Reuters, many trains in India have toilets that are just chutes which empty directly on the tracks below.
Once she awoke from her fainting spell, Kalbi told her relatives what happened. The train stopped and staff at a nearby station found the baby girl on the tracks, alive.
(Link)
Born at 5th Avenue
A woman successfully delivered a baby girl on Fifth Avenue, New York. The baby was greeted by onlookers from Central Park applauding the doctors who delivered the child in the parents SUV. One lady who heard the commotion, Lucille Nassery, said she could hear the pregnant lady screaming from her office. Mother, Elizabeth Brew, 39, was less than a block away from the hospital with her husband when the baby began to crown. She was 33-weeks pregnant. Hospital staff and Physicians rushed to the scene with equipment to help Dr. Anya Kogan deliver the newborn. After delivering a 4 pound and 13 ounce girl, Brew was rushed away to a delivery room at the hospital, where she then delivered a 5 pound, 5 ounce twin boy.
A healthy baby girl was delivered at a post office in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, before paramedics arrived. Mother Sonia Marina Nascimento (which means birth in Portuguese), who is Portuguese, had visited the shop to buy mobile phone credit when she gave birth to baby Dulce. The baby was weighed on parcel scales. Post master Paul Childs, 58, said: "We put the baby on the scales and she weighed 5lb 15oz (2.34kg)." He added: "We worked out that's the equivalent of an £8.22 first class parcel." (Link)
Born at 30,000ft
Nicola Delemere started struggling through the pain of contractions, when she and her husband were 30,000ft in the air on a plane to Crete, she was 25 weeks into her pregnancy - and there were no doctors on board. The jet had been diverted when her waters broke but Mrs Delemere knew that Alfie couldn't wait for landing. Thankfully, flight supervisor Carol Miller was there. The woman used a drinking straw to clear the boy's lungs, before carrying out mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage for half an hour. She relied on her basic medical training, and a retired nurse and ambulance driver were also there to help. The baby was born somewhere above Dusseldorf in Germany. The plane soon arrived at Gatwick Airport and Alfie was taken straight to hospital. First Choice Airways gave the new family a free trip to Cuba once Alfie could fly.
(Link)
Born at the London Subway Station
A pregnant British woman got off her London Underground subway train at Kingsbury Station, north west London, and all of a sudden, her water broke and she went into labor on the platform. Paramedics were called, who decided that there wasn't enough time to get her to hospital. And 35 minutes later Julia Kowalska gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the station supervisor's office.
Even though millions of people use the London subways every day, she's only the second baby to be born in the London Underground's 125 year history. The only other baby was born way back in 1924 in a south London station.
(Link)
Born in a shrimp boat
Shrimp boat captain Ed Kiesel had to think fast and put his creativity to the test when the boat's cook went into labor 30 miles at sea. Kiesel did what he could with a brand new package of paper towels, a first aid handbook and some net twine.
The baby boy came out breach (feet first) and had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, but Kiesel managed to deliver him. The only problem was the baby wasn't breathing. Kiesel tried to clear the baby's nose, rub its back and after 25 minutes of CPR, the baby boy breathed on his own.
(Link)
Born on his mother's front lawn
A Fullerton, Calif., woman gave birth in a very unlikely place: her front lawn. Thirty six year old Jessica Higgins was reportedly on her way home from the shopping mall when she went into labor and gave birth to her daughter Mary Claire, six weeks prior to her due date. Her two-year-old son was sleeping in the backseat of the car.
Higgins dialed 911 when she got home, but when police arrived she had already given birth and was standing in the driveway holding the newborn. Mary Claire was 5 lbs. 11 oz.
(Link)
Born in an elevator
Ashton Lee Simola's arrival in this world began in a hospital elevator with his mother shouting at his father, “He's here! Catch him!” The 6 pound, 1 ounce baby was delivered in the B Elevator at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center. Heather, two weeks shy of her due date for their second child, had stopped at her husband's job at United Rentals to bring him lunch. As they sat eating in the car together, Heather started having contractions. Rob raced to the hospital down Arrowhead Drive with Heather wailing next to him. Traffic at Arrowhead and Highway 395 was thick. Rob drove into the right turn lane next to a JAC bus going straight. He pantomimed to the driver that his wife was pregnant and he wanted to get in front. The bus driver got the picture and let him in.
Rob didn't slow down on Medical Parkway, nor did he bother with parking. The elevator to the obstetrics department was some 100 yards down the hall. When the doors to the elevator slid open, there sat Heather screaming in pain and a crazed Rob behind her. Somewhere between floors two and three, Heather screamed. Ashton could wait no longer. “She said catch him so I caught him,” said Rob. The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck. Rob said he tried to unravel it but couldn't and the elevator was coming to a stop.
Rob handed the baby off to Heather, and with the child only partly born, she held the cord off his throat as Rob shoved her off the elevator and into the lobby. Three nurses were waiting for him. They'd gotten three phone calls in the time the couple had raced against fate. Even before they made it into a room, the tiny baby with the coal black hair was nearly all the way out. Nurses quickly cut the umbilical chord, and Ashton let out a wail.
(Link)
Born in a tree
Born in McDonald's (the mother didn't know she was pregnant)
Born on a train and slipped through the toilet
Born at 5th Avenue
Born in a post office
Born at 30,000ft
Born at the London Subway Station
Born in a shrimp boat
Born on his mother's front lawn
Born in an elevator
10 Most Fascinating Medical Miracles
