Most pregnant women spend a significant amount of time in the waiting period daydreaming about the birth of their child while listening to calming music and receiving relaxing massage therapy. only a shout’s distance from you. But this resourceful Queensland mum unexpectedly met her daughter on a desolate roadside.

Lydia Kirk gave birth last week in a homemade bed on the Bruce Highway, somewhere between Bowen and Proserpine, with a local property owner serving as a nurse, in one of the best Australian childbirth stories you may ever hear. After her first prolonged labor, the mother of one believed she had plenty of time to travel to the hospital. But her young daughter had other ideas.

Chris Broucek was rushing to bring his partner Lydia Kirk, from Bowen, to Proserpine Hospital on October 6 when Miss Kirk noticed her daughter was starting to wear the tiara. Lydia explains that her hometown of Bowen doesn’t have a birthing suite, so she knows her and her fiance Chris Broucek drove 70 kilometers ahead of them. Now, the mother-of-two says: “I told Chris, ‘I have to push, I have to push!’ and he said ‘no, you can’t!’ Before we started going to Proserpine Hospital, we went to Bowen Hospital where our midwife told us we were 4 centimeters dilated and needed to start descending Proserpine. We were halfway through the drive and I told my fiance I needed a push. He said to me, ‘I don’t think so’! I pushed about three times and said to him, ‘I can feel a bulge, Chris, I can feel her head’.

Lydia says that’s when Chris jumped into action and called triple zero, but little Layla was already starting to make good progress. She said: “We were still driving when she delivered and I held her up on my chest. He had to rip off my underwear with his hands because I had to pull them aside when she came out. The couple then pulled over and followed the emergency operator’s instructions on the phone, including lying on the side of the road because Lydia’s seat didn’t recline thanks to the car seat in the back. Lydia added: “A local property owner stopped by and brought us some towels while we waited for the ambulance. After the ambulance arrived, they made sure both Layla and I were safe and okay, clamped the umbilical cord and took Chris to cud hmbilical lord and took Chris to cud her hel.

Ms. Kirk said she hugged Layla tightly when Mr. Brouke called 000. He said paramedics told him to put his fiancee down but he couldn’t fully recline the front passenger seat in their car. because there are child seats in the back. “But I have a nurse’s kit and some blankets and I made a makeshift bed by the side of the road,” Broucek said. I couldn’t get the baby out because of the cord, I didn’t have a leatherman or knife and had to rip it by hand because they were expecting the mother to keep coming out.

Ms Kirk, who also has a two-and-a-half-year-old son with Mr Broucek, said her first birth was also swift and she believes the second will be no different. An ambulance went to the couple on the side of the road to make sure Layla was okay. Paramedics helped Mr Broucek cut the umbilical cud as his wife lay on a makeshift bed on the grass. Lydia said: ‘I didn’t think much of it other than wondering if Layla was all right and well – to be honest, she came so quickly that I was in a chock state. I’m glad to have Chris with me because he took over the situation and made sure everything was okay.”