One Manitoba woman got an early Christmas surprise when she delivered her baby on the side of a highway Christmas Eve.
STARS Air Ambulance received a call about a pregnancy emergency from the hospital in Hodgson, about 180 km north of Winnipeg.
The flight crew, with a critical care nurse and advanced care paramedic, landed at the hospital around 8:55 p.m., intending to transport the woman to St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg by air.
Their plans changed when they arrived and discovered that active labour had already begun.
Grant Therrien, base director for the STARS program in Manitoba, said the crew decided it would be safer to try to get the mother to hospital in an ambulance.
Two paramedics, along with the STARS nurse and advanced care paramedic, started heading south with the woman in the ambulance. About 40 minutes south of Hodgson, however, the ambulance pulled over because the woman’s labour progressed and the baby was born around 10:00 p.m.
Therrien said both mom and baby were stable when the crew finally dropped them of at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg.
“For the crew, it was great, on Christmas Eve, to help a mom deliver her baby into the world,” said Grant Therrien. “It’s always a relief to hear that baby cry, and to wrap that little bundle of joy and hand it over to mom.”
Therrien said the call was the first of its kind for the Manitoba branch of STARS.
