Throughout pregnancy, one of my biggest concerns about labour and delivery was that I might give birth in the car.
It wasn’t a completely irrational fear given that our hospital was almost an hour away from home, and considering my family has a long history of quick births.
It never happened – my daughter was born in the hospital – but if we hadn’t made it there before her arrival, I doubt I would have coped as well as the mum in this video.
Lesia Pettijohn from Texas found herself giving birth in the family minivan, as her husband, Jonathan, drove to the birthing centre (without stopping) and captured the whole thing on his GoPro.
The video starts after the couple has been in traffic for 45 minutes, when things start to progress very quickly. Lesia can be heard saying she is scared she might have the baby in the car, then, 30 seconds later, her waters break. Just a couple of minutes after that, their baby – a boy now named Josiah, who weighed a very healthy 10lb – is born.
Her husband, who asks earlier if he should pull the vehicle over, gives instructions once the baby is out, “He’s breathing if he’s crying, he’s breathing, but hold him upside down, babe. Hold him upside down and pat him on the booty.”
He can also be heard at the end of the video wondering whether the birthing centre will still charge them when they arrive. Although he has since posted a comment to YouTube, stating, “By the way, the comment about wondering if we still had to pay for the birth center was just a joke. They still gave us lots of medical care, we still used their facilities including for delivering the placenta.”
Speaking to Today about what happened, the mum of three said, “It was difficult for me to stay calm. It definitely helped that [Jon] was calm.
“I was pretty much freaking out. I was not wanting to have him [in the car],” she added.
The couple said they made the video because they didn’t have any recordings of the birth of their two older girls. And, if you’re wondering why they didn’t stop, they thought the best decision was to continue trying to get to the birth centre as quickly as possible, as they don’t own a mobile phone.
You can watch the captivating video below, but warning: it may be considered graphic by some.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXEZ6g2WLoM
