Recently, we wrote about Bethany Mandel’s unexpected birth story. Mandel, a writer, gave birth to her third child on the side of the road in New Jersey, with her husband helping her deliver the baby.
Because of this, we asked for our readers to share their crazy and unexpected birth stories on Facebook.
This is what they said:
“January 28th, 2014 at 4 a.m., I woke up to pee. I was a week overdue. My back had a dull ache, so I turned on the shower. Within ten minutes, the dull ache turned to full on contractions. It took me another five minutes to get dried off and dressed. I woke my husband up, grabbed my bag, woke my grandma up who was staying with my older two kids while I had the baby and headed to the Jeep to start it.
We live in Central Northern Michigan, were in the middle of that polar vortex, and it was 30 below. My Jeep almost didn’t start. By the time we headed out, it was 4:50 a.m. We had several inches of ice on the road, so he started out driving 45 mph. We were on the road five minutes when the contractions started coming very fast together.
We were five miles from the hospital when my water broke. [My husband] drove those last five miles so fast that I’m surprised he didn’t crash the car. We got there at 5:40 a.m. The ER nurses got me right up to the L&D department, and an ER doc followed us up, because the OB wasn’t on call till 6. The nurses wouldn’t let me push until the OB got there, even though baby was already crowning.
I remember saying that ER docs have to take an OB rotation and he was qualified to deliver the baby. The nurses then said their instruments weren’t ready yet. I told them that the instruments weren’t needed. Thank G-d my OB got there, because baby wasn’t going to wait. He was born at 5:58 after three pushes.
Ironically, I was scheduled to go in at 8 am for an induction.”
-HE
“[There’s] the one where the hospital bed collapsed and in the chaos someone knocked out the epidural, and dropped the sample for the fetal scalp test on the floor, all while the surgeon kept threatening an emergency c-section.
Or the one where the baby was born in the back seat of my car in the hospital taxi stand, after which they grabbed the baby, forgetting about me and leaving me standing there in the parking lot looking down at the clamped cord laying there on the asphalt?”
-RE
“Awoke five days before my due day a bit crampy. Called the midwife at 10 a.m. [and] she said to wait it out, [as] I didn’t sound like I was in labor yet. Decided to set off to the hospital (an hour’s drive) at 1:30 p.m. as my back was hurting, definitely thought I had tons of time (3rd baby) half hour to the hospital.
It all just happened, and my son was born in my car, delivered by my mother-in-law.”
-RB
Share your crazy birth stories with us in the comments below.