Photo: Getty Images
A healthy baby boy was delivered this weekend aboard a transatlantic United Airlines flight. The mom was traveling from Ghana to Washington DC when she started having contractions, and said she wasn't due until late February but she was over the Atlantic when she went into labor.
And as luck would have it, Dr. Stephen Ansah-Addo, a dermatology resident at the University of Michigan, heard the overhead call for a health care professional and jumped into action joined by a nurse from Dayton, Ohio, and another United flight attendant, who is also a nurse. What are the chances!
Behind business class they put down blankets and towels and as the contractions got stronger, after just an hour the doctor felt the baby's head. A few pushes later, a healthy baby boy was crying on board. The makeshift medical team couldn't find a clamp at first to cut the umbilical cord, so they resorted to using string.
Paramedics were ready to meet the plane when the almost 12-hour flight landed at Dulles International Airport in D.C. The airline released a statement saying the "delivery was uneventful other than being at 30,000 feet."