(Hawaii Pacific Health)
HONOLULU — A preemie baby is in a Hawaii NICU after making a surprise entry into the world when he was born on a flight above the Pacific Ocean.
Lavina Mounga was traveling from Salt Lake City to Hawaii late last week when she went into labor. Her family says she is from Utah but did not know she was 29 weeks pregnant when she got on the plane.
Mounga ended up delivering the baby in the plane’s bathroom.
@juliaberniceIt’s the ‘baby being born while we’re above the Pacific Ocean’ for me♬ original sound – Julia Hansen
She and her new baby boy named Raymond were extremely lucky to have three NICU nurses and a doctor on the flight.
“I’m just happy he’s here and he’s doing well and I had all the help that I did on the plane. Just feeling lucky and blessed,” Mounga told an NBC affiliate.
Lani Bamfield, Mimi Ho and Amanda Beeding are from Kansas, and they were on a girls trip to Hawaii. Bamfield heard the calls for medical help calling from the bathroom.
“I went up and went back there and she was holding a baby at the bottom like underneath the toilet almost and so I am like, Mimi, there is a baby and it’s little,” said Bamfield.
But the baby being so little didn’t phase them.
“That definitely means something to us because we work in the NICU,” said Ho.
“I don’t know how a patient gets so lucky as to have three neo-natal intensive care nurses on board the same flight when she is in emergency labor,” said Dr. Dale Glenn, a family medicine physician for Hawaii Pacific Health who was flying home.
He also was able to help stabilize mom and baby born on the flight for three hours until the plane landed. The pilot couldn’t make an emergency landing, because they were over the ocean at the time.
The team improvised with what they had available. They used an Apple Watch as a heart rate monitor and made baby warmers out of bottles they microwaved and used blankets as an incubator.
The GofundMe says Lavinia and the baby will be staying in Hawaii longer while the baby gets healthy enough to fly back home to Utah.