MIRAMAR, FLA. (WSVN) - After racing to her doctor, a pregnant mother ended up giving birth to her child in the parking lot of a South Florida hospital.
“This was the closest that we came here, and the contractions, they started getting worse,” said the child’s mother, Danisha Cotton.
Cotton had a final appointment with her OBGYN on Wednesday to finalize birth plans for her third child, but her daughter Roselyn Shyla Brown had other plans.
“Then I had one text that said, ‘I’m coming, I think I’m having the baby,'” said Cherisse Jackson, Cotton’s mother.
Labor pains sent Cotton to her mother’s home Monday morning. Her stepfather and mother then drove her to the hospital. Cotton rode in the backseat with her two children.
The family pulled in to Memorial Regional Miramar because they worried they wouldn’t make it in time to her designated hospital.
Upon arrival, Cotton began to push and gave birth in the backseat of her car. “I said, ‘Mommy, it hurt,’ and I was trying to calm down, and then she just slid out,” she said. “I was like, ‘I think she’s in my pants.’ I had on pants, so I had to pull down my pants, and she was laying there.”
Jackson walked into the ER to let doctors know Cotton had given birth in the parking lot.
“She said, ‘I think you want to step to the side because 20 people are going to come running out of there,” said Jackson.
Labor and delivery nurse Anna Hoo said, “Once we heard the page overhead, we grabbed our precipitous deliver kit. We have a baby warmer, and there’s a response from labor and delivery, also the nursery and the ICU.”
A doctor delivered the placenta and Roselyn let out her first cry after some stimulation from staffers. She weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces, and she was the third natural birth with no medication for Cotton.
“Out shift starts at 6:45 a.m., and she was born at 8:48 a.m.,” said Hoo.
Cotton said her family didn’t even have time for coffee.
“Everyone was calm. I know [my mother] wasn’t calm on the inside, though,” she said. “I’m happy.”
Roselyn was named after Cotton’s grandmother, who passed away in 2016.
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