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Halfway through the flight that had left Salt Lake City, the pilot suddenly reported a medical emergency. Four passengers – including a doctor and three nurses – rushed to the heavily pregnant Lavinia Mounga to help her with the delivery. Afterwards they continued to monitor for several hours how the baby was doing.
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Ⓒ HAWAII PACIFIC HEALTH
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Survival mode
“The nurses and I were just in some sort of survival mode. We had to make a hospital bed on an airplane. In addition, we had not one, but two patients, ”says Dr. Dale Glenn of Hawaii Pacific Health. The delivery involved a lot of improvisation. For example, Glenn says that several shoelaces were used to cut the umbilical cord and an Apple Watch was used to measure the heart rate of the newborn child. To keep the baby warm, water bottles were put in the microwave to hold against the body and the baby itself was wrapped in plastic. The delivery must have come as a huge surprise to Mounga, because she herself had no idea that she was pregnant all along, reports USA Today.
According to Glenn, the other passengers were surprisingly calm and offered the mother and her new son their own diapers and blankets. He also has words of praise for the new mother. He says she was able to walk through the plane just minutes after giving birth.
After landing in Honolulu, Mounga and her baby were taken to the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children.
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