Driving Husband Catches Baby One-Handed While Wife Gives Birth En Route to Hospital

Ryan and Kelli Emge had to act fast when Kelli began giving birth to their newborn baby Rebecca on the way to the Mercy Health Fairfield Hospital just outside of Cincinnati, Fox 19 reports.

The Ohio couple was still cruising down the highway when “Rebecca made it evident that she was coming and not waiting,” Kelli Emge told Fox 19. 

The Emges began to improvise.

“Real quickly, [Kelli] took her seatbelt off, put her knees on the seat facing the back and started giving birth in the passenger seat while I was driving on the highway,” Ryan told Fox 19. 

Ryan says he “had kind of a freakout.”

“I was like, ‘Honey, do you want me to pull over? What do I do here?’ And she’s like, ‘No, keep going, we need to get to the hospital,’” he recalled to Fox 19. “The baby started coming out, so I just reached over with my hand and I caught the baby.”

The catch was one for the ages and Ryan delicately placed the child on the seat. 

“It was, like, the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen. She just handled the whole thing,” Ryan said of Kelli. 

The Emges were not the only couple at Mercy Health Fairfield Hospital with an unconventional birth story that day.

While Kenariye Delaney was in labor at her home, her partner called an ambulance, but her baby was not waiting on anybody.

“He came within five minutes of that phone call,” Kenariye told Fox 13. The ambulance arrived two minutes after Kenariye delivered her baby.

She says she’s always wanted to give birth at home, “But I didn’t expect it to happen that way,” she told Fox 13.

The couples look forward to spending the holiday season with their newest additions to their respective families and both families were relieved neither instance required medical assistance.