pregnancy

This Australian woman gave birth in a Ute. On the side of the road. TWICE.

Let me set the scene. It’s 8 am. Your husband is off somewhere shaving his beard. Your contractions are getting closer and closer together…

Naturally, you call the hospital. A little bit excited, but overwhelmingly terrified.

They tell you to bake a cake. SERIOUSLY?

No? Okay, well watch the tennis then. After all, it’s the first baby. These things take AGES.

Only, sometimes, things don’t quite go to plan. And by the time Rebecca Dalton hustled her freshly shaven husband to make the fifteen-minute drive to the hospital, it was too late.

She was doomed to give birth, legs up, in the front seat of her trusty Triton Ute.

It was….well….you have to hear it.

Rebecca tells Holly Wainwright and Andrew Daddo what went down that morning on the This Glorious Mess podcast:

“My husband was saying, ‘don’t push, whatever you do don’t push,” the Queensland mum told the This Glorious Mess podcast.

“About five minutes up the road, my waters – I guess the best way to say it is exploded in the car.”

Unable to walk the last leg to the hospital, Rebecca sent her husband Sean to call emergency. While he was on the phone, it happened.

“The head is out. The head is out.” she screamed.

By the time the nurses arrived, so had baby Keeva.

Rebecca at 35 weeks pregnant. Image supplied.

"I was pretty calm. I didn't think she was coming that quickly. I had done yoga and was all about getting into my zone."

That zone just happened to be a Ute in the hospital car park.

The Cooloolabin local said she had written a beautiful birth plan for Keeva, which obviously ended up going out the window. So for the second pregnancy, there was no birth plan. It was just: get to the hospital.

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She didn't even manage that.

Rebecca awoke in the witching hours of the night, and decided not to wake her husband or call the midwife. Best to be sure the baby really is on its way first, right?

When Rebecca finally made the call, the midwives calmly told her to come on in.

But she was destined to repeat her first pregnancy.

Rebecca with her daughters Keeva and Stella. Image supplied.

She turned to her husband Sean and said "Ohhh, I've done it again."

"We were on the highway when Stella was born," she said.

"JUST KEEP DRIVING!" she told him.

Three contractions later, Rebecca and Sean met their daughter Stella.

Rebecca introduces her beautiful new family. Image supplied.

There's just one thing this whole situation left us wondering. What became of the ute? Who drew the short straw to mop up all those exploding waters? What happened to the car seats? Did the placenta plop out onto the footmats?

It was hosed down, Rebecca said, and detailed. And Mitsubishi heard about the event and were kind enough to send them a baby arrival gift... new car seat covers.

Rebecca said the car holds a special place now. For some, anyway.

"No one really wants to sit in it unless they're driving, because the driver's seat is the only one no one had a baby in!" she said.

For more parenting talk including over the top pregnancy announcements, listen to the full episode of This Glorious Mess here:

You can buy any book mentioned on our podcasts from iBooks at apple.co/mamamia, where you can also subscribe to all our other shows in one place.

Do you have a crazy birth story? Let us know in the comments, or email tgm@mamamia.com.au