You’re in labour. And you’re on the way to hospital. And there’s a traffic jam.
Just when you realise that yes, you are going to have this baby, RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW, you raise your head between contractions, look out the car windows at streets full of passersby and have one terrifying realisation.
“YouTube. That’s what I was thinking. Social Media… I’m going to have this baby on YouTube.”
That’s Bianca Grant talking. She’s from Adelaide, and this is exactly what happened to her.
Here her story, including why she can never look at pineapple ever again, on This Glorious Mess, here:
She welcomed her second child into the world not surrounded by supportive midwives and cups of ice, but with her feet up on the dash, in the passenger seat of her husband’s ute.
Bianca was overdue, and about to be induced. So the night before her induction date, she ate lots and lots of pineapple, because she’d read somewhere that it brought on labour. And it worked, because the next morning, she was labouring in earnest, and climbing into her husband’s car to get to the hospital and welcome her second child.
“Jeez, this car’s filthy, we should have cleaned it,” thought Bianca as she got into the ute. They set off, and then they hit roadworks on the 10-minute drive to hospital. And then her waters burst. And the car got much, much dirtier.
As time ticked on, Bianca’s husband Stephen got on the phone to the paramedics, who started talking him through what to do. First, get out of the traffic.
(Image supplied)
So Stephen drove the car up onto the pavement between two cafes, and Bianca realised what was going to happen. "It was just this feeling of doom. [I thought] My feet are going to be going on the dash... I was just freaking out.
"And then I saw this aquaintance walk by and look in, and he looked dumbfounded because... there was a lot of blood."
"My husband was running around trying to put his work sheets up at the windows... there was a bus going past and they could see in...
"There was a baby blanket in the car and and he put it underneath me to try to save his seat covers... All the pineapple came out. You don't want your partner to have to see that..."
Bianca felt much better when the paramedics arrived. Briefly. "I was screaming 'Drugs! I need drugs, I need gas!" But by the time the little canister of oxygen came out, [the baby] was on my chest."
Bianca's partner Stephen with baby Danica (Image: supplied.)
Happily, little baby Danica was fine. As was Bianca, once she got to the hospital for some stitches.
"I felt like I could run a marathon afterwards, it must have been the adrenalin... I thought I could just walk home, but they were like, 'No, you're coming to hospital...'"
Bianca and Stephen have still got the car.
"He got it detailed. I actually picked my phone up off the dash, and it was in a pool of blood."
Too bad about those seat covers, Bianca.
This Glorious Mess is a podcast about stories from the frontlines of family life. It's hosted by Andrew Daddo and Holly Wainwright, who like to compete for whose family life is crazier. You can listen in itunes, in your podcast app, or right here: