If you’re a little bit uncomfortable with flying or the thought of giving birth, you may want to skip this article! Although rare, babies are born on planes a lot more frequently than you may think, so we thought we’d share four incredible stories of air born babies and their brave mothers:
Chloe
Back in May, Ada Guan boarded an Air Canada flight from Calgary to Tokyo with her boyfriend, Wesley Branch. Little did either of them know that Ada was actually 37-weeks pregnant with their child.
As the couple flew over Russia, 23-year-old Ada began to feel a pain in her abdomen that became so bad she moved to sat on the floor in the middle of the plane. Still, the couple assumed it was simply a really bad stomachache. Ada had done a pregnancy test a month before the flight, but the test had come back negative.
Worried for her safety, three doctors on board came to Ada’s aid and she was moved to first class. Speaking to CBC News, Ada said: “When I got moved to first class, I could feel something wanting to come out. That’s the moment I knew.”
36,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean, baby Chloe was born.
The plane received priority to land at Narita International Airport 30 minutes after Ada gave birth to her daughter, and the new family was rushed to a hospital in Tokyo. Although they now owe the hospital the equivalent of 2000 Canadian dollars, Branch said the mother and baby received excellent care.
Mamel Joella
In 2013, an international flight from Johannesburg, South Africa to New York City received one new passenger when 17-year-old Fatoumatta Kaba gave birth to her son Mamel Joella.
The New York Daily News reported that she had gone into labor just four hours into the 16-hour flight whilst they travelled above West Africa. Crew members rushed to find medical help on the South African Airways flight, and luckily located two doctors and a nurse, who assisted Fatoumatta, the wife of a Gambian diplomat, as she gave birth at 38,000 feet. Pediatric anesthesiologist Dr Julie Williamson, a mother of two from California, who helped with the delivery said: “It was exhilarating. While there was a lot of discussion whether to divert the flight, she made the decision for us by saying, ‘Push!’ And when we checked, the baby was crowning, and she delivered him in two pushes.”
“You could see his little umbilical cord still attached,” one passenger Jamahl Winters, 32, told reporters at the time. “It’s amazing. I didn’t think stuff like that really happened in real life. I thought it was something that happened in TV and movies.”
Dr Williamson described the baby boy as ‘vigorous and happy’, saying that he nursed straight away. “And she was a very strong woman” she added speaking of Fatoumatta. “Never cried, never complained. It was amazing.”
A few days later, the new mum and Mamel Joella were safe at Jamaica Medical Centre, where Fatoumatta said she ‘very happy’ and hadn’t been scared at all.
Kevin Raymar Francis Domingo
Aida Alamillo, 41, was 35 weeks pregnant when she boarded a plane from Manila to San Francisco back in 2011. Though she was due within weeks, Aida had been cleared to fly and so thought that everything would be fine. Her aim was to get to Massachusetts where her sister and father lived, as he was not well at the time. Aida was accompanied by her three other children who she was taking to live in the US.
When Aida went into preterm labor, three nurses on board the flight and some crewmembers trained to assist in delivering babies helped her bring Kevin into the world.
The flight incident report written by Flight Purser Antonia Castañeda stated that Kevin had ‘good skin colour’ and had a ‘loud cry’ when he arrived. Upon landing, the mother and newborn were taken to a hospital, safe and sound.
Nadine
Born six weeks premature, baby Nadine was quite a surprise for the crew of Flight BA 215 back in September 2006. The flight was travelling from London to Boston, but Nadine’s mother went into labor five hours into the trip.
Although a doctor, a retired midwife, two nurses, a crewmember and a medical student delivered Nadine, there were still concerns about her as she was very small.
One crewmember, Mr Dobe, told the BBC that he had noticed the woman looked uncomfortable during the emergency procedure demonstration.
“She was clearly pregnant and I could see she was a bit uncomfortable. But I thought she was just scared of flying,” he said.
“We have an action plan for these sorts of things. We didn’t tell passengers someone was giving birth, but we did say there was a medical emergency and called for any doctors to come forward.”
Due to her size, Nadine and her mother remained on the plane after it landed in Halifax, Canada so an incubator could be delivered.
