Although medical science has come along well enough to make childbirth go more smoothly than it ever has in decades or even centuries past, nothing can completely stop it from being a tense and unpredictable process.
Not only can giving birth be outright traumatic for a mother’s body and not only can it leave couples with more children than they expected, but there are enough rare possibilities to throw new parents the kinds of curve balls they may never have even heard of.
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But while one woman ran into precisely the kind of unexpected situation that would amaze and terrify most of us, it’s clear that she handled it with the exact level of confidence she needed.
When opera singer Emily Geller Hardman had her first child, Wesley, she had intended to bring him into the world naturally.
As she told Good Morning America, however, the circumstances of this birth called for an emergency caesarean section.
As she considered the resulting procedure a traumatic experience, she was determined to have the kind of birth she initially planned on when her daughter Rosemary came along.
But it seemed that her plans would need to change for a second time when her water unexpectedly broke after she and her husband attended a wedding.
However, because the fluid was clear and there were no contractions, she figured that she had at least 16 hours before the baby was actually ready to arrive.
However, this outlook changed when she had her first contraction at 3am. But she still wasn’t worried about what lay ahead for her.
In her words, “In my head I was thinking that I’ve been preparing for this for three years. I can certainly do early labor in the car.”
But it turned out she would have more on her plate than that after more liquid and contractions came when her husband stopped the car so she could stretch.
Although she had tried not to push so they could make it to the hospital, it soon became clear to Hardman that this baby was going to come sooner than expected no matter how much she tried to fight it.
As she said, “I could feel myself bearing down and pushing. I instinctively just reached down because I’m feeling so much pressure and I feel the top of a baby’s head starting to crown.”
To make matters worse, there was nowhere her husband could pull over so Hardman found herself having to deliver her own baby in the back of a moving car.
Alongside the preparation she had done for this pregnancy, Hardman credited her experience as an opera singer for how she kept herself from being overwhelmed by the situation.
In her words, “You have to perform at a high level under stress, so you’re used to those types of situations and having to focus on what you’re doing and not how you’re doing.”
Oddly enough, it seemed that the easiest part of the experience would turn out to be the delivery itself.
As Hardman said, “There was no pushing stage of her head slowly coming and then waiting for the next contraction and resting. It was just a one-shot deal — she just flew out.”
h/t: Good Morning America
