What Emergency Births Teach Us About Labor and Delivery

The Polar Vortex has delivered more than snow and ice this winter season. Turns out, babies are being delivered everywhere too. On a highway! On a sled! In a snowstorm! And the one thing it teaches us about labor and delivery is that giving birth is as natural as it gets. It also proves moms are stronger than we give ourselves credit for!

On an Atlanta highway, one mom gave birth to her third daughter in the car — with her two older girls in the backseat! Even the first responding police officer that saw their car parked in the emergency lane noted how calm and in control the parents were, as baby’s head began to crown and was delivered in 20 degree temperatures.

A first time mom mustered up all her courage to labor, and ultimately deliver, her first child during a snow storm – completely by herself! After calling her midwife and mother, it became obvious no one would make it in time because of the blizzard. “Once the water broke and I realized this was it, all fear went away. I realized it wasn’t going to help me and that we would be a team and do this together. And we did it,” the new mom said.

As if giving birth as a first time mom completely by yourself doesn’t prove the incredible strength moms possess, delivering a baby on a sled should! Worried that he wouldn’t be able to get his pregnant wife down to their car in the snow covered slope in front of their house, one concerned father bought an inexpensive, neon green sled just in case. He figured he could use it to bring his now over-due wife down the hill to the car if she went into labor. In a seemingly frightening ordeal, in frigid temperatures, practically laying in snow, one baby girl was born to the arms of her worried father.

But it’s this paramedic that responded to a frightened couple delivering their first childon the side of a Tennessee road that helps us understand how natural labor and delivery truly is. While he arrived in minutes, there wasn’t much for the paramedic to do, “With babies being delivered, as long as there aren’t any complications, God, mom and baby take care of everything,” he said.

Isn’t that the truth!

Four  moms show that, with otherwise normal pregnancies and a lack of complications, a baby can be delivered int the scariest weather conditions. What our body goes through to deliver a child is as natural as the weather that keeps us stranded on highways or stuck in our homes. Labor and delivery should not be feared, and if you’re lucky enough to have someone there to catch the baby, that might be all your really need.