An Australian doctor on a trans-Pacific flight was upgraded to first class and given a bottle of vintage champagne after delivering a baby for a Brazilian who didn’t even know she was pregnant, news reports said on Sunday.
The mid-air birth aboard a New Zealand-to-Chile flight was even more remarkable because it brought together an eminent obstetrician with a complex breech birth, in which the baby comes out feet first and a Caesarean section is the normal recourse.
”I didn’t know what was going to happen — if the baby was going to breathe, if the mother was going to bleed, and if I had to make any cuts to get the baby out, were they going to give me a plastic knife?” Jenny Cook told Sydney’s Daily Telegraph.
She had to deliver the baby next to the toilets with the help of only stunned LAN Chile flight crew and the contents of a basic first-aid kit.
The mile-high nativity took place three weeks ago, but was only reported when Cook returned to Australia.
Although the 26-year-old woman’s waters had broken, she was insistent she was not pregnant. Cook’s ministrations took just minutes and a woman known only as Aline gave birth to a daughter she called Barbara.
”I held her up by the legs, and put her on her mum’s stomach,” Cook recalled. ”The staff said, ‘What do we do now?’ And I said, ‘Take photos!”’ — Sapa-dpa