Baby Born In Car At 22 Weeks Is Home For The Holidays

SACRAMENTO — A baby born more than four months early is home for the holidays after she was delivered in the family car as her mother rushed to the hospital, according to UC Davis Health.

Jazmin Quijano was just over 22 weeks pregnant when she went into labor and made a frantic overnight trip roughly 50 miles from Stockton to Sacramento after learning her local hospital wasn’t equipped to care for such a premature baby, according to the health system.

It was around 2 a.m. and Quijano and her partner had reached South Sacramento when baby Daleyza was born in the front seat, according to UC Davis Health, which reported an emergency dispatcher instructed the first-time mother over the phone on how to break the amniotic sac and perform CPR.

First responders arrived in a matter of minutes, cranking up the heat in the ambulance and using a single finger on Daleyza’s tiny chest for CPR as they rushed her to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at UC Davis Children’s Hospital, according to the health system.

“In our own controlled environment with the NICU, it can be challenging to maintain thermoregulation in extremely preterm infants,” neonatal nurse manager Janelle Beall said, according to UC Davis Health. “It is incredible what EMS did to get the baby here safely. It made all the difference.”

Babies born at 22 weeks in the U.S. have a survival rate of 10-20 percent, but at the UC Davis NICU, the rate is 50 percent, according to the health system, which reported that Daleyza spent 146 days in the NICU. Born weighing 1 pound, 1 ounce, she was up to almost 8 pounds when she was discharged in November, ahead of Thanksgiving, according to UC Davis Health.

“There are no words to express how thankful we are,” Quijano told UC Davis Health.