Passing nurse, Dayna Dumont, 31, was driving home from her shift and was able to help the couple, although the baby had been born
A woman ended up giving birth to a baby girl in the back seat of her car after her husband panicked on the way to hospital and crashed into a concrete barrier totaling their vehicle.
Hongwei Zhang ended up running across four lanes of a deserted San Diego road in an effort to flag down a passing car in the middle of the night on Monday, just before 3am – desperate for a way to get his wife who was in labor, to hospital.
Zhang stood in the road and frantically waved his arms about in order to get the driver to stop to assist his wife, Ying Shi, who was about to give birth.
By sheer luck, the driver was a registered nurse who had just finished her shift at Scripps Memorial Hospital and was heading home for some well-earned rest.
‘He was saying, “My wife, my wife!” The next thing he said was, “The baby came!” said Dayna Dumont, 31, who works in the emergency department at Scripps hospital. ‘I quickly jumped out of my car.’
‘I took a peek and there was a baby,’ Dumont said to the San Diego Union Tribune. ‘The mother was in the seat with a baby girl between her legs and in her pants.’
Zhang’s car was completely written off as both airbags were deployed and it was almost impossible to open up the passenger-side door.
Dumont checked to make sure the umbilical cord wasn’t around the infant’s neck but thankfully it wasn’t.
The panicking dad took too wide a turn and smashed the family SUV into these concrete barriers at the side of the road
Zhang then managed to regain enough composure after the birth and pregnancy to call 911 and get an ambulance to take them all to hospital.
San Diego Police confirmed that Zhang had taken too wide a turn and slammed into a number of concrete barriers at the side of the road in his rush to get to the hospital.
‘I didn’t think the baby had actually arrived,’ Dumont said. ‘The mom was sitting there so calmly. I was asking, are you in any pain or discomfort, and she said no… She was just asking, “Is the baby OK?”‘
Dumont held the baby until paramedics arrived and cut the umbilical cord.
She made sure the mother and her baby were safe in the ambulance and on their way to hospital before she got back into her own car and headed home.
Zhang and Shi issued a statement thanking everyone who helped the,
‘First of all, as Christians we want to thank God for keeping us safe through all of this. Next, we want to thank all of the people who gave us help,’ they said. ‘When this happened, we thought we were all alone. But very quickly, a woman stopped to help us and called 911. Then a man stopped to assist. They were both complete strangers but they stopped to help us anyway.’
The parents said they were grateful for the paramedics who took care of them and their baby and grateful for the doctors, nurses and staff at Scripps.
The couple named their baby Anna and she is said to be healthy and doing well.