Picket Fence Post

When I was ready to push and give birth to my third child, I was still in my bathroom, miles away from the hospital. I asked The Spouse to call 911 for an ambulance, but he insisted, Speed Racer he, that he could get me to the hospital faster than an ambulance could make it to our house. (Had I not been howling like an animal and doubled over at this point, I would’ve argued with him.)

While writhing around the passenger seat, I could feel the in-tact amniotic sac starting to protrude from my body. The wild-eyed Spouse urged me to hold the baby in and not push. (I would’ve laughed at that if I didn’t feel as though I was being impaled internally.) The ER staff eventually dragged me out of the car, cut off my maternity shorts in the parking lot and wheeled me into the ER where I frightened everyone in the waiting room with my shrieking. If anything, I thought afterwards, I had a fairly dramatic birth story on my hands.

But Francine Alfontent has me beat by a country mile.

Alfontent and her husband were on a New York City subway train Monday heading for the hospital when her daughter decided she wasn’t going to wait for any stinkin’ hospital to make her entrance into the world. So Alfontent, with the help of strangers, gave birth right there on the subway platform while trains were coming and going, and a crowd had gathered.

A guy who witnessed the birth told MSNBC: “Guys were coming up and they were saying, ‘Congratulations, Mom. You’re a very strong woman,’ and guys were giving the father high fives. It’s not every day that a woman has a baby on the subway.”

How about you, Picket Fence Post readers, any of you have an interesting childbirth story? It doesn’t have to be of the subway platform caliber. Feel free to share.

Image credit: MSNBC/Wendy Brown.