Special Delivery: Mom Gives Birth On NYC-Bound Flight

QUEENS, NY — A flight from Paris landed in New York City last month with one more passenger than expected after a pair of doctors helped a woman give birth on the plane. Urologist Sij Hemal and pediatrician Susan Shepherd jumped into action when Toyin Ogundipe went into labor on the Dec. 17 Air France trip, delivering her healthy baby boy named Jake.

The plane was 35,000 feet above the coast of Greenland on its way to John F. Kennedy Airport when Ogundipe started having contractions. Hemal, a second-year resident at the Cleveland Clinic, volunteered to help, telling the crew to keep going to JFK because Ogundipe was still in the early stages of labor.

The plane was still about four hours from New York, but an emergency landing would have taken it on a two-hour detour to a military base in the Azores Islands, about 850 miles off the coast of Portugal.

The doctors — who were seated next to each other — moved Ogundipe, who lives in Nigeria and the United Kingdom, to the more spacious first-class section. They monitored her vital signs a with the plane's limited medical kit.

Ogundipe's contractions became more frequent. Within an hour it was clear the baby was coming. After another half-hour of pushing, Jake was born on the floor of a plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

"I was relaxed because I knew I was in safe hands," Ogundipe told the Cleveland Clinic. "They did everything a doctor or midwife would have done if I was in the labor room in the hospital. Even better, if you ask me."

Hemal, who was on the second leg of his trip back to Cleveland from India, used a shoelace and a surgical clamp to tie off the umbilical cord. Shepherd, who practices in Montana and has worked in Africa with Doctors Without Borders, checked Jake's health and then let him nurse from his mother.

Ogundipe and Jake were taken to Jamaica Hospital after landing at JFK, the Cleveland Clinic said. She was released later that day and went to her friends' home in New Jersey to recover with her new baby.

Hemal rushed through the immigration line and hopped on his third flight to Cleveland. Air France sent him a travel voucher and a bottle of champagne as a reward for his work.

Though his urology work doesn't require Hemal to deliver babies, he did it seven times in medical school, where all doctors are "trained to stay calm and think clearly in emergency situations," he said.

"So much could have gone wrong, but it didn’t," Hemal told the Cleveland Clinic. "Being on that particular flight, sitting next to a pediatrician … it’s like it was destiny. Thanks to God, everything worked out."

(Lead image: Jake was born to Toyin Ogundipe on a Dec. 17 flight from Paris to New York City. All photos courtesy of Cleveland Clinic)