People on United Flight 997 were in for a major surprise on Sunday after a passenger gave birth to her baby mid-flight. Thankfully, several medical professionals were on the flight, which was traveling from Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana, to Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, but it's a flight that no one onboard is soon to forget.
The 11-hour flight started normally.
But about six hours in, something unusual happened.
"I was asleep. ... I thought I was dreaming when I heard moaning. I got out of my seat, and I saw someone on the ground. A nurse was over her," passenger Tiani Warren told CNN.
Warren, who was returning from a three-week trip to help at the Genesis Shishidzee school in Jamestown, said it took her a moment to realize what was going on.
A passenger sitting in the row behind her in business class had gone into labor.
The woman has yet to be named, although the New York Post identified her as a Ghanaian New York City resident.
“I thought, 'Oh God, I know she is not about to give birth on this plane,’” Warren recalled to CNN. “I was literally counting her contractions — seven to 10 minutes apart. I was, like, freaking out. Oh, my God."
Luckily, Dr. Stephen Ansah-Addo, a dermatology resident at the University of Michigan, was on the plane that day.
Ansah-Addo, a nurse from Dayton, Ohio, and a flight attendant who is also a nurse all answered the call for a health care professional and worked to help the mom through her labor, ABC News reported. Together, they turned the area behind the business class section of the plane into an operation room of sorts.
"Then the doctor started working on her. They brought out an IV to put in her," Warren told CNN. "She was moaning and yelling, but half the people on the plane didn't know what was going on."
Warren told CNN that to add to the drama, their plane had some turbulence during the flight.
After about an hour of contractions, Ansah-Addo said he could feel the baby’s head crowning.
"I couldn't believe it was happening," he told ABC News. "But I was trying to stay calm."
A few pushes later, and the baby boy was born.
"I just started praying over her out loud as she was starting to push. She was crying. Before you knew it, the baby came out,” Warren recalled to CNN.
In total, Warren believes the birth took about two and a half hours.
"The baby belched out a loud cry. ... To be up close and personal like that, Lord Jesus help us all. I'm glad the baby is fine," the passenger said.
Both mom and baby were healthy, and after they were cleaned up, mom went back to her seat before the plane landed. Ansah-Addo told ABC News they had a little trouble cutting the baby’s cord without a clamp onboard, so they used a string instead.
"This is the reason why you go into medicine, to help people," Ansah-Addo told the news outlet. "This is someone that really needed help, because there was nobody else there. This is the kind of medicine where you can make a difference in people's lives."
Paramedics were ready to meet the plane when it landed about 5:40 a.m. Sunday.
ABC News reported that a United Airlines employee even greeted the mom at the airport with balloons and a handwritten card that read: "On behalf of the United team at Washington Dulles, congratulations on your baby boy!"
"The delivery was uneventful other than being at 30,000 feet," another United Airlines employee told the news outlet.
“Our crew was amazing,” United Airlines told CNN in an official statement. “They acted quickly, assisted the medical professionals onboard and ensured everyone stayed safe throughout the flight. And we were especially thrilled to see the plane land with one extra, especially beautiful, customer onboard.”
This isn’t the first time a passenger has been added mid-flight.
Back in early January, a mom on a flight from Madagascar was arrested after allegedly giving birth to a baby mid-flight and abandoning it in a trash can in the bathroom.
In May 2021, Lavinia Mounga gave birth while on a plane trip to Oahu, but before the flight she had no idea that she was pregnant.
But for Warren, this was clearly enough excitement to last a lifetime.
"I literally just witnessed a woman giving birth on the plane,” she wrote on Instagram. “And ... I am stressed out, I'm excited. I'm tired. All in one. But the baby is a boy. It's beautiful. It was a little sketchy at first, but God is good. This is unreal. ... I'm in shock right now. This is crazy."
Source: cafemom.com
