Dramatic doorbell footage caught the moment a California mom was forced to give birth outside her house after her water suddenly broke while she was trying to make it to the hospital.
Natasha Downing, who was 39 weeks pregnant, had only just left her home in Calabasas with her suitcase in tow when she was overcome with crippling pain and had to crouch down near the doorway, Caters News Agency reported.
“I’m walking down the stairs and I feel my baby coming,” the 34-year-old recalled of the caught-on-camera ordeal.
“I had to squat down outside and then my waters break. I knew I wasn’t making it to the birthing center.”
After screaming out for nitrous oxide pain relief, Downing said her husband, Tom, quickly took a peek and told her that the baby’s was already “poking out.”
“I got into the squat and I just breathed, like, I just did not push at all, and her head cleared on her own,” Downing said.
“As my husband looked, he told me the baby’s blue and only her head was out — and I feel her pushing backward.”
The footage, which was edited to cut out the actual birth, captured Downing clutching onto her husband as she was hunched over next to her suitcase in the middle of their front path.
“I didn’t know how she was going to clear in this position. So, I got on my side and I’m lying with my leg in the air,” Downing said.
“I was on call to my midwife and all I know is I have to push to clear her shoulders. My husband got her head,” she continued.
“It’s like a wave going through my body and that was my only push. She came out and she was totally fine. One push and she came out.”
Moments later, Downing’s husband filmed her lying near the doorway clutching their newborn daughter, Lilybella.
“She was perfectly healthy, it was everything I had ever dreamed of,” Downing said.
“It sounds like it would be a traumatic birth, but it was very healing and really amazing.”
