Midwives Use Candles to Deliver Baby Girl in Laundry Room When Tornados Knock Out Power
A team of midwives helped to deliver a baby girl amid the chaos caused by tornados that ripped through Texas over the weekend.
According to the Dallas Morning News, expectant mother Mech Metiege was at Bump Birthing Center in North Texas on Sunday night to prepare for a natural water birth for her baby girl, Sekani. But while she and her team of midwives were concentrated getting everything ready for the big moment, they were unaware that three powerful tornadoes were beginning to tear through the Dallas area after touching down around 9:30 p.m.
“It was a beautiful day outside, nothing to worry about,” Kasie McElhaney, the owner and lead midwife at the center, recalled to CNN. “Then around 10 p.m., or a little before, it was time for her to start pushing and our phones all started going off saying there is a tornado near us.”
Then, with Metiege’s contractions steadily increasing, the building’s electricity went out.
The team needed to move quickly. They decided it was too late to call for emergency services to minimize the risk that Metiege would give birth inside a moving vehicle, McElhaney explained to the Morning News.
So, they improvised.
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“We quickly took [the mom] into the laundry room,” McElhaney said.
Using candles to light the small room, the team guided Metiege throughout the birthing process. Just a mile away, the most imminent tornado passed by.
“It sounded like a screaming mom,” midwife Jordyn Zmolik told the newspaper. “We didn’t hear anything other than that.”
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With the father-to-be, Derrick Metiege, by her side, Metiege successfully gave birth to Sekani — which means “joy,” according to the parents — 30 minutes after they assembled inside the laundry room.
The center later uploaded a picture of the laundry room birth to their Facebook page, where it quickly garnered more than 4,000 likes.
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“Baby girl born in our laundry room with the tornado sirens going off, a tornado on the ground half a mile away, and no electricity… by candle light!” they wrote in the post. “Welcome to the world beauty!”
Metiege told the Morning News that she owes it to the Bump Birthing Center’s midwives for keeping her calm throughout the ordeal.
“I don’t know what I would’ve done,” she said.
According to CNN, the tornados knocked out power for tens of thousands of people in the Dallas-Fort Worth areas. Two people in the Great Plains were killed, the outlet reported.
