North Carolina Nurse Delivers Her Own Baby on Way to the Hospital
Norine Reese had planned to deliver her fourth child at home.
— -- A North Carolina woman who works as a nurse at a nursing home got the chance to deliver a baby Tuesday morning, except the baby was her own and she delivered him while her husband was driving her to the hospital.
“I always wanted to deliver a baby but I never thought it would be my own,” Norine Reese told ABC affiliate WLOS.
Reese had planned to give birth to her fourth son at her family’s home in Canton, North Carolina, but when her midwife could not get to her home in time, she and her husband, Nathanael, abandoned that plan.
Instead, they called a babysitter for their three sons and left as soon as the babysitter arrived, around 4 a.m.
“As soon as we saw the lights of their car, I took off down the road,” Nathanael told WLOS.
As the couple drove, Reese said she knew they were not going to make it to the hospital in time.
“The contractions got stronger and worse and I was like, ‘I think I feel his head,’” Reese recalled. “One more contraction and he was out.”
“I turned on the dome light and I said, ‘Yup, there it is,’ and I just kept on driving,” Nathanael said.
Reese said she put her son, who they named Asher, on her chest, while Nathaniel immediately went into caretaker dad mode.
“I made sure that the windows were rolled up and the heat was turned on because he was naked and wet and I was worried he was going to be cold,” said Nathanael, who works as an X-ray technician.
The couple made it to the hospital with Asher in tow, and both baby and mom received clean bills of health, the couple said.
Asher weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds, 10.3 ounces, according to WLOS.
“We were both calm,” Reese said of their response during the surprise delivery. “I don’t think we ever had fear.”