A woman who did not know she was pregnant gave birth to a baby boy on a Delta Airlines flight that just so happened to be carrying her own personal medical team.
Lavinia “Lavi” Mounga was flying from Salt Lake City to Honolulu on Wednesday when she unexpectedly gave birth to her son Raymond at just 29 weeks, according to a news release from Hawaii Pacific Health.
“Our sister did not know she was pregnant so she was just as shocked as the rest of us when our nephew was born.
Luckily for Mounga, there happened to be several passengers on board the flight for whom caring for a mother and her new baby is second nature: Dr. Dale Glenn, a family medicine physician with Hawaii Pacific Health, and NICU nurses Lani Bamfield, Amanda Beeding and Mimi Ho.
“I don’t know how a patient gets so lucky as to have three neonatal intensive care nurses onboard the same flight when she is in emergency labor, but that was the situation we were in. The great thing about this was the teamwork,” Mounga said in the release. “Everybody jumped in together and everyone helped out.”
“We were about halfway through the flight and we heard someone call out for medical help. I went to see what was going on and see her there holding a baby in her hands, and it’s little,” Bamfield said in the release.
Glenn relied on wilderness medical training, and he and the nurses used shoelaces to tie and cut through the baby’s umbilical cord, the release said.
They also made baby warmers out of microwaved bottles, and used an Apple Watch to measure the newborn‘s heart rate, keeping him stable for the three hours it took to land.
“I was literally counting down the time on my watch, between where we are in the flight to when we can get this child to Kapiolani [Medical Center for Women and Children],” Glenn said in the release. “As soon as we got him on board the ambulance, we headed straight for Kapiolani. And once he arrived there, the emergency room took great care of him, moved him up to the NICU, and baby and mom are both doing great.”
The new mom has since been discharged, though little Raymond will remain in the NICU until he is ready to go home.
The heartwarming story was captured on video by TikTok user Julia Hansen, whose viral clip has been viewed more than 13.4 million times.
In the video, Hansen says, “A baby was just born on this plane.” A round of applause then breaks out following an overhead announcement about the birth. At the end of the clip, Mounga is brought out in a wheelchair and people clap as the baby is heard crying.
