Woman delivers her own baby in bathtub with help from Google
"I knew that panicking wouldn’t help in this situation," she said.
A Nashville, Tennessee, woman traveling to Stuttgart, Germany, thought she had a case of food poisoning after she forgot to ask for a vegetarian meal on her flight.
Turned out, she was actually in the early stages of labor.
Tia Freeman, who said she did not know she was pregnant until her seventh month, told ABC News she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Xavier Ata Freeman, in the bathtub of her Istanbul, Turkey, hotel room.
After landing, Freeman was in line at customs in Turkey, where she had a long layover en route to Germany, when it occurred to her that she might be in labor, she said.
Knowing no one in Turkey, and uncertain as to whether she was experiencing food poisoning, false labor or the real thing, she turned to Google for help and searched “how to tell if you’re in labor.”
Freeman left the airport and headed to her hotel, all the while experiencing the mysterious pains. Once inside her hotel room, she realized that she was indeed in labor.
“I was shocked but calm. I knew that panicking wouldn’t help in this situation,” she said. “I needed to figure out what my next step was.”
Scared that a hospital wouldn't take her insurance overseas, Freeman decided to take the risk and try to deliver her baby herself, according to ABC Nashville affiliate WKRN. So, Freeman went back on the internet to figure out how to give birth alone, she said. She headed to the bathroom and sat in the tub.
“I look up YouTube videos and begin gathering what little supplies I have,” she said. “I time my contractions using my iPhone and then begin to push.”
At 8:29 p.m. on March 7, her little boy, Xavier Ata Freeman, was born.
Freeman later went to the hospital to get checked out, she said. There, her baby was declared "perfectly healthy," she posted on Twitter.