It’s a birthday this family won’t soon forget.
An expectant mom and her husband went through quite the ordeal earlier when they unexpectedly welcomed their baby while on board a commercial flight.
Liliana Castañeda Avila’s water broke, and she went into labor mid-flight while on her way home from Mexico to North Carolina on Nov. 14. Avila was told that her due date wasn’t until Dec. 23, and the beginning of labor caught her completely off-guard.
Avila began experiencing contractions an hour into the flight at 30,000 feet after her waters broke, though she tried her hardest to hold on until the flight landed so that she was able to give birth on the ground.
With the help of a nurse who was also on board, the new mom labored for more than three hours. “(The nurse) was like, ‘Yeah, the baby girl is coming, it’s on its way.’ And she was like, ‘Don’t try to push, because if you push more, the baby will come out.’ So I held those contractions for like three hours and 30 minutes on the way here,” Castañeda said in a video posted to Facebook by the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department.
Crews aboard the Delta flight were able to call 911 in Atlanta, where the plane was touching down for a layover, and first responders were waiting at the gate when it arrived.
“The airplane was coming in exceedingly fast, faster than normal, so we knew there was an emergency and we knew people were nervous,” said Jeanette Nash, one of the firefighters who greeted the plane.
“We knew what we were doing, we wanted to make her feel as comfortable as possible. Just putting ourselves in her shoes, we knew that she was already very uncomfortable.”
“As we got onto the plane, we started to realize this is real,” Marlo Blas, with Atlanta Fire Rescue’s aviation EMS team, said.
The firefighters found Avila on the floor at the back of the plane. After a quick assessment, they decided to deliver the baby on the spot. “They were like, ‘OK, are you ready to push?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to push.’ So I just pushed once, and the baby girl came out crying,” Avila said.
Little Analia weighed in at 2.28 kg and was born at 6.36 pm on a Sunday evening, was in the hospital for a few days but is doing just fine, her parents said.
It was a happy moment for all involved, including the passengers, who let out claps and cheers when the little girl was born.“As firefighters, we don’t deal with many happy moments. We deal with a lot of chaos and things like that, so being able to experience a moment with some happiness was gratifying,” said Blas.
