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Missy Berberabe Umandal had taken a leisure trip with her mom to Dubai and was on her flight on the way home when this miraculous event began to unfold in front of her.
A woman a few seats away from her suddenly said that she was experiencing contractions – two months before her baby was scheduled to be due.
It was the fifth hour of a nine-hour flight back to the Philippines. Umandal recalled that it was the first time she’d ever seen “flight attendants, who are meant to always maintain their poise and composure, panic ever so slightly.”
Everyone on the flight immediately moved to action.
The attendants, after collecting themselves, called for medical assistance and found two nurses onboard.
The mother-to-be was already crowning, so the nurses and attendants very quickly moved her to a more spacious part near the front of the plane.
For a while, no one knew what was happening. Then, a few seconds later, “there were tinier, cut screeches, and it was when we knew the baby was born,” Umandal wrote in a Facebook post afterward.
Other flight attendants made a makeshift shelf and tub in which the baby could be cleaned, and other passengers who were also traveling with children immediately came forth to offer supplies and clothes for the new mother.
The pilot decided then that he would make an emergency stop in India so the mother and child could visit a doctor, to ensure all was well – particularly since the baby had been born two months early.
Although the nine-hour flight had now turned into 18 hours, none of the passengers on the plane seemed to mind. According to Umandal, everyone seemed to agree that they had been blessed to witness such an extraordinary experience.
After watching this on-flight birth, Umandal was moved to wish both mother and child a lifetime of happiness together, thank her own mother for everything she’d done, and declare that this was an experience she would treasure for the rest of her life and undoubtedly share with her own future children.
You can read Umandal’s full post here:
