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You must have come across several incidents where births happen at places least imagined of. Who wants to deliver in the back of a car seat? Yes, delivering mid-air on an airplane might be more fanciful, but then would you want to catch the attention of hundred or more onlookers on board! Here are a few unexpected and not very fanciful places that births have happened. You might also wonder what their partners were doing at the time of birth.
1. Birthing in a sinking car
This can be one of the most insane birth-in-the-car stories. Kenyatta Biggs, aged 21, gave birth to a baby in her sinking car! She took her car to drive off to the hospital at 5 in the morning with no escort. It’s likely that she wanted to keep news of her pregnancy under wraps, so no one in her family would know. But as she drove, she felt strong contractions, lost control over the car, and it crashed into a murky lake. She had her seat belt fastened still as she was sinking, but guess what happened next. A local deputy who was on his way to work happened to see the sinking car, which of course hadn’t been hanging out there for too long to be ignored, so he approached the trapped passengers in the car. He figured out that there was a baby already born in the car seat with her mother strapped in there. He pulled them out of the lake. Kenyatta had suffered a broken leg, but her baby was just fine, thanks to the timely rescue.
2. Birthing in the car while husband drives and films
I can’t believe this woman labored in the car while being held up in traffic for 45 minutes. Lesia Pettijohn, however, managed to stick in there and give birth to a 10-pound baby in the passenger seat of her car as her husband drove and filmed the whole thing in the meanwhile. While one would wonder why the husband didn’t choose to pull over or drive her to the hospital, the first thing to do when she said that her waters seemed to have broken, it was apparently Lesia who asked her husband to keep driving. Within two minutes she could feel the head emerging and within seconds her baby arrived!
3. Birthing on a shrimping boat
This story is about a baby who was delivered on a shrimping boat and was named in the honor of the captain of the ship who helped rescue the baby when its mother went in labor on board. The mother called Cindy Preisel was a cook on the ship. They were 30km away from the shore when she felt the contractions. Ed Keisel, the captain of the ship, took over as a makeshift obstetrician. He didn’t lose his cool when he saw that the baby was coming out feet first (something that could make even medical practitioners panic); instead, he reached inside the mother to gently free the shoulders using his fingertips. Then he reached inside her to free the head. It turned out that the baby was not breathing. It took Ed 25 minutes to bring it to life. The baby was named Brian Edward Preisel, of course, the middle comes from the captain of the ship in whose honor the mother named him so.
4. Giving birth in a tree during a flood
In 2000, when Mozambique was hit by the worst floods in 50 years, a woman called Sofia Pedro, who was very pregnant, was perhaps the worst hit. While you would expect the inhabitants using all means to flee the scene, paddling in canoes around submerged homes, Sofia found shelter in a tree. She was held up there for three days, all soaked, starved and terrified with water gushing underneath. In the meanwhile, she went into labor and delivered a baby. The mother and baby were rescued three days later when a rescue helicopter arrived at the scene.
5. Giving birth in a train toilet
This happened on a passenger train in India when a woman called Bhuri Kalbi, a 33-year-old woman who was pregnant at the time of travel left her seat, to use the washroom. As it turns out, the toilet outlets on these trains empty on the tracks, it didn’t work in the best interest of Kalbi. As she went to relieve herself, pop came her baby and fell off the toilet hole onto the tracks. The train had to be stopped, and the rail workers, who were radioed, came looking for the baby. Miraculously the baby was found unscathed. The two-month preterm baby was taken to a hospital ICU and so was her mother. And the girl has survived to tell her tale.
