New York: Home delivery! A woman in the US has managed to do the unthinkable by delivering her daughter with her own hands alone in a bathroom. 34-year-old Erica Bovino from Southington, Connecticut, thought she had plenty of time before the baby came. But then her water bag broke and Bovino realised she was going to have to give birth on her own.
She drew herself inward and did not panic. Summoning all of the relaxation and breathing techniques she knew, she chanted and moaned and stayed calm through the pain of labour.
Somehow, she managed to do what many would find unthinkable, Bovino delivered her daughter with her own hands in the toilet while her 3-year-old son lay sleeping in a room nearby and her husband Paul Sulzicki was rushing home from his overnight shift as a police officer.
"There was no time to be scared," Bovina was quoted by Today as saying. "You get into a primal mode. If I had an ounce of fear, I wouldn`t have been able to have a healthy outcome," Bovino said.
Little Stella was born in the couple`s bathroom early on May 6, five days before her due date. The birth was not without complications. The umbilical cord was severed during delivery and there was a lot of blood loss, Bovino said.
But Stella did not require any special treatment at the hospital where the mother and baby were taken after the birth for monitoring. "I`m blessed that everything turned out the way it did, that she was healthy and I was healthy because, who knows, any number of things could go wrong in childbirth," Bovino said.
Still, Bovino said, she hopes her unique experience will inspire pregnant women "to trust themselves and trust their bodies. For thousands of years, women birthed naturally. Now women don`t trust themselves and they fear the unknown of it."
Dr Mary Rosser, an obstetrician who did not treat Bovino, credits the new mom for staying calm and focused in a situation that could have been deadly.
Rosser said the potential complications include problems with the placenta or uterus (which could be deadly for the mother), a severed umbilical cord like Bovino had (which could have been fatal for the baby), or the baby crashing to the floor.
"This was a story where you know that miracles really do occur," said Rosser, an attending physician at Montefiore Medical Center who practices in Larchmont, New York. "But doing this alone at home is very dangerous and could potentially be catastrophic."
"The exact moment of delivery is a hazy memory now. But after several minutes I reached down and grabbed her," Bovino said.
PTI
