Growing Your Baby - Parenthood from Pregnancy to Pre-school » Unusual Birth Stories

2-Year-Old Helps Mom Deliver Baby

Lisa — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:08:11 +0000

A Tennessee mom was caught by surprise when her fourth child, who was scheduled to be delivered by C-section, arrived 3 weeks early – at home.

After experiencing contractions all night, Bobbye Favazza, 27, called her daughter in around 8:30 a.m. to call 911.

When emergency services personnel didn’t arrive in time to help, Bobbye’s 2-year-old son Jeremiha Taylor stepped in.

Jeremiha even remained calm and went to get his mom a towel,without being told, when she started to bleed.

“It happened so fast,” Favazza said. “My water broke, and the baby came two to three minutes later. I just pushed and (Jeremiha) caught him.”

In order to open the door for the arriving firefighters, Favazza held her newborn with the umbilical cord still attached.

Mother and baby finally arrived to the hospital, where they were each given a clean bill of health.

SOURCEPhoto by Stan Carroll

Baby Arrives Prematurely on Board AirAsia Flight

Lisa — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:40:07 +0000

There was some excitement on board an AirAsia flight last night, when a baby arrived just 30 minutes after the aircraft left Bayan Lepas Airport in Penang.

Liew Siaw Hsia, a 31-year-old waitress from Taiping, took the flight from Penang last night when she was just 27 weeks pregnant, a week shy of the recommended travel ban for pregnant mothers.

When she boarded the flight, she said that there was already some discomfort.

But 20 minutes into the journey, she started feeling contractions and the flight crew immediately made an emergency diversion to Kuala Lumpur.

“When I started feeling a lot of pain, I was still too nervous to ask for assistance. It was when I couldn’t take it anymore that I asked the passenger beside me for help,” said Liew.

She said that the flight attendants tried to calm her down and to hold on from giving birth, but the pain was too unbearable.

“They immediately asked the other passengers sitting around me to move elsewhere, and asked for a doctor on the PA system,” she said.

On the flight was Dr Ronald Tang, another passenger, who quickly volunteered his services to the nervous mother while the cabin crew held her hand throughout the entire ordeal.

The new baby is the first infant to be born aboard and AirAsia Airplane. To commemorate the big event, the company announced that they will provide a lifetime of free flights to both Liew and her son to all destinations.

Earlier this week another new mom needed to be airlifted after delivered her baby arrived 3 months early on a car ferry.

Coast Guard Rescues 28 Week Baby Born On A Ferry

Lisa — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:24:16 +0000

A car ferry in the English Channel headed for Spain was the scene of an exciting airlift this morning after a baby girl arrived much early than planned..

The tiny baby was born at just 28 weeks in the early hours of the morning aboard the Pride of Bilbao.

Shorty after the surprise delivery mom and baby were winched from the vessel by the coast guard and taken to airport before being transferred to the Hospital.

Before the baby arrived, the new parents were on vacation. Dad will have to remain onboard until the ferry reaches Spain tomorrow morning.

The baby girl, who had breathing difficulties at birth, is now in intensive care.

SOURCE

“Miracle Mom” Survives H1N1 While 9 Months Pregnant

Shannon — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:08:42 +0000

Twenty nine year old Karin McHugh had one of the worst cases of H1N1 doctors had ever seen. She was also nine months pregnant at the time she became ill. But remarkably, her baby is healthy and she lived to tell the story.

Her illness was a textbook case of how the H1N1 virus can be particularly harmful to expectant mothers.

It started back in July when Karin developed a cough with some wheezing. She didn’t ever consider the possibility of it being the H1N1 flu. Not feeling very well, she called her OBGYN to see what she could take and was told to see her family doctor. They diagnosed her with bronchitis and sent her home with an inhaler.

Just five days later she started running a fever and couldn’t get out of bed. She knew something wasn’t right and told her husband to take her to the hospital.

When doctors at the hospital did some x-rays they saw that Karin had fluid on her lungs. At first they thought that she had pneumonia and placed her on a respirator. When that didn’t help she was tested for H1N1. Positive results prompted an emergency c-section and then she was placed in a medically induced coma for seven weeks.

“She was as sick as anyone could be,” Scott Halpern, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania said.
McHugh was placed on a heart-lung bypass machine, but despite doctors’ best efforts to keep her stable, she twice suffered cardiac arrest.

Karin didn’t get to meet her precious son until he was almost two months old. Thankfully the c-section was done right away or else baby Liam would have died also. There was barely enough oxygen for Karin herself, nevermind enough to support the baby.

Officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that through late August, about 100 pregnant women in the United States required hospitalization in the intensive care unit for infection with the new strain of the H1N1 virus. Of these women, 28 so far had died due to complications directly associated with the virus.

A study that was published in the journal Lancet in August suggests that pregnant women are at much greater risk of severe complications from the H1N1 virus than the rest of the population.

Despite sobering warnings from the CDC that pregnant women are seven times as likely to be hospitalized with H1N1 and four times as likely to die from it, some women — with the advice of their doctors — are choosing not to get the vaccine because they fear its potential effects on their unborn babies.

Karin said that if she heard of a story like this while pregnant she would have definitely got the vaccine for it, had it been available. She knows just how lucky she is to have survived such an ordeal and have a healthy baby too.

“He’s perfect,” she said.

- Shannon Strohm, Staff Writer

SOURCE

Baby Slips Through Toilet Chute During Delivery and Survives

Shannon — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:40:24 +0000

Tuesday night 28 year old Rinku Devi and her husband Bhola Rai were aboard 8181 Tata Chappra Express heading to the home of her parents. They were expecting their little bundle in about four weeks.

Feeling some pain in her abdomen she had got up from her seat and headed to the washroom on the train. To her shock and horror she gave birth into the toilet. Things happened so quickly that before she could grab the baby, he slipped through the pan of the toilet and fell onto the tracks.

Immediately she ran from the washroom and jumped from the moving train. People aboard thought she was commiting suicide and pulled the emergency alarm. By the time the train came to a stop it had gone about 2km.

We got off the train and started looking for my wife. After an hour, we found Rinku sitting beside the track with the baby in her lap,” said husband Bhola Ray (33), a businessman from Rourkela.

The new mom and baby were taken to the nearest junction which was Purulia station just after midnight, from where they were taken to the hospital.

Swapan Sarkar, the medical superintendent of the Purulia Sadar Hospital, said both mother and baby were doing fine.

Wow, I can’t even imagine giving birth into a toilet on a train and watch in horror as the baby falls down to the moving tracks below. And then to jump from a moving train without any second thought. I am so happy that mom and baby are doing well. Incredible! – Shannon Strohm, Staff Writer

Romanian Mom Welcomes 14.5lb Baby!

Lisa — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:38:37 +0000

A mom from the town of Botosani, Romania surprised everyone, including herself, yesterday when she gave birth to a baby weighing 6.7 kg (14.5lbs) and 58 cm.

The baby, who arrived on Saturday, is the tenth child for the family, whose youngest baby is one year old, and the eldest 16 years old.

The new mom told staff at the maternity ward that during her pregnancy she had never seen a gynecologist, and thus she did not know that the baby had reached such a sized.

The baby sets a new record at the hospital, after another newborn had last year 6,450 grams at the same maternity.

SOURCE

Australian Mom Welcomes 13.5lb Baby!

Lisa — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:35:02 +0000

Chelsea Rose Mackay surprised everyone when she arrived weighing almost 14lbs. The newborn is believed to be the biggest baby ever born at Townsville Hospital and one of the largest in the country.

Weighing in at a hefty 13 pounds eight ounces and 55cm in length, there is certainly plenty of Chelsea for her first time mum, Danielle Mackay, to cuddle, the Townsville Bulletin reports.

Born on Thursday, Chelsea measures up at twice the size of an average baby and almost five-and-a-half times the size of her little friend, Melinda Burns.

Melinda was born prematurely at 818g, or just under two pounds, but is now a month old and weighs just 1.2kg.

Ms Mackay said she and partner Paul Mifsud ate a diet of stockman’s tucker and also snacked on icy poles while pregnant with Chelsea but never imagined her bundle of joy would be this big.

Neonatal specialist Dr Yoga Kandasamy said while most babies of Chelsea’s size were sick or had mothers with gestational diabetes, both mum and babe were a picture of good health.

“She would have to be one of the biggest newborns I have ever seen,” Dr Kandasamy said.

SOURCE

Update: Newborn found in Shoebox in Lobby of Long Island Apartment Building

Lisa — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 04:00:23 +0000

Last Sunday night a newborn was found abandoned in a shoe box in the lobby of a Long Island Apartment Building.

The tiny baby, who was less that a day old, still had the umbilical cord attached to the baby and tied off with dental floss.

Yesterday police arrested the newborn’s mom. She has six other children, ages 8 and younger, and admitted to being addicted to cocaine during this pregnancy.

Xiomara Gamez, 24, who worked as a prostitute to support her drug habit, was afraid to go to a safe haven because of her undocumented status, police said. She moved from El Salvador 13 years ago.

At a news conference in Mineola, Det. Lt. Raymond Cote said Xiomara gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the basement of an abandoned house in Hempstead just after 1 a.m. Saturday.

She named the baby Pearl and left her at an apartment building where she knows Hispanic families live. Coverage of the story led to a tip from a man in Queens.

This story just gets worse with every piece of information that is released. I pray that a good family adopts this baby and never tells her about her crappy beginning.

After delivery, some babies who were regularly exposed to cocaine before birth may have mild behavioral disturbances. As newborns, some are jittery and irritable. They may startle and cry at the gentlest touch or sound. These babies may be difficult to comfort and may be described as withdrawn or unresponsive. Other cocaine-exposed babies “turn off” surrounding stimuli by going into a deep sleep for most of the day. Generally, these behavioral disturbances are temporary and resolve over the first few months of life.

Ughhhh!

SOURCE SOURCE

Baby Born On Estonian Ferry Wins Free Travel For Life

Lisa — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:54:28 +0000

Passenger Shipping Company Tallink announced today that a lucky baby born on one of their passenger ferries en route from Sweden to Estonia last week will get lifetime free travel.

Spokeswoman Luulea Laane says an Estonian woman gave birth to a girl June 11 with assistance from the Baltic Queen’s doctor and other medical personnel among the 1,000 passengers traveling between Stockholm and Tallinn. The baby and mother are doing well.

Laane said today that the Tallinn-based company decided to honor the birth by granting the baby free travel for life on the Baltic Queen that was launched in April. The parents are also entitled to substantial discounts.

That’s not bad considering the cabins on this boat start at €216 for a basic inside and go up to €1296 for a suite.

SOURCE

Woman’s Water Breaks On R Train, Conductor Delivers Baby!

Lisa — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:49:02 +0000

Subway conductor Bretta Sykes can add ’stand in midwife’ to her resume after she helped deliver a baby on the R Train yesterday.

The baby girl couldn’t wait for her parents to reach the maternity ward, so Sykes stepped in as midwife.

“The baby is coming!” yelled the Brooklyn mother, whose water broke as she and her fiancé headed from their home in Bedford-Stuyvesant to the Queens hospital where the mom had planned to give birth.

“I did not want to cut the umbilical cord. I’m a conductor. I only push buttons,” joked Sykes, a mother of two grown children.

The unexpected delivery happened at the Whitehall station in lower Manhattan, just hours after Sykes’ 29-year-old daughter, Fortune, had told her she was going to have a baby.

“A few hours later, I was delivering one,” Sykes said.

Sykes, a 16-year MTA veteran, was waiting on the platform to begin her W train route when she heard a commotion on an R train that had entered the station and went to investigate.

As soon as she pulled the mom’s jeans down, Sykes knew she wouldn’t have the luxury of waiting for paramedics.

“I saw the baby’s head,” said Sykes, of Westbury, L.I.

Sykes pulled off her jacket, caught the infant with it and wrapped her in it. “She looked okay to me,” she said of the newborn. “I had tears in my eyes.”

Someone asked what time it was. When a passerby yelled 1:25p.m., the gathered crowd started applauding.

SOURCE