Mom Delivers Baby on Side of Road as Kids Watched

Most women probably don’t think they’ll forever be known from headlines that read “Mom delivers baby on side of road,” but that’s exactly what this Kentucky mother of five, Heather Skaats, did over the weekend.

In a Facebook post, Skaats shared that she was having “light contractions” before she got in the car with her other kiddos, but didn’t think much of it because her due date was still three weeks away and she had long labors with her other children. So off she went to run some errands.

“I thought I wouldn’t have a baby in my arms until eight or ten hours later,” she says.

And then things…took a turn. Her contractions grew more intense and began coming much closer together, which indicates that labor is in action.

“Well, I had another wonderful water birth planned at home just as I had in the past,” Skaats shares on Facebook. “That didn’t go as planned. I was literally driving in the car with all the kids when I felt like I needed to pull over. Got out of the car, went to the other side in the grass and literally had a baby. It was so quick! I only thought these things happened in movies!”

It may be a story fit for fiction, but Kaats literally drove herself to her house with her baby still attached. Her midwives arrived shortly after, thankfully. And the best anecdote (aside from the baby and mama being totally healthy, of course) is that they all had to pick the grass off the wee roadside babe.

“I’m still in shock that I delivered my own baby on the side of the road,” Kaats says. “But he is perfect, all of the kids are happy to have him here, and today was a day I will never forget.”

280614104 8208993775793224 7765180060901956189 n Motherly — Heather Skaats

She notes that her husband was disappointed about missing the birth of his sixth child, but he did get to be on the phone when she called him right before delivering him.

“I was literally just out in the barn feeding horses 20 minutes before he came out,” she says. “It was that fast. And no, he still doesn’t have a name. Have to keep that tradition alive!”