UPDATE: May 2, 2021 6:45 a.m.: A Go Fund Me account has been set up to help with expenses. Lavis Sisters reported that mom and baby will be staying in Hawaii while the baby gets healthy enough to travel back home to Utah. More information is available here: https://gofund.me/795b05fe
A group of Kansas City-area healthcare workers was in the right spot at the right time Wednesday.
The right spot just happened to be on a Hawaii-bound flight in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
The right time just happened to be when a fellow traveler went into labor in the airplane bathroom.
“This lady just starts screaming, 'Oh my God, we need help, doctor, medical, oh my God,' she’s like freaking out," LAni Bamfield, a registered nurse at North Kansas City Hospital, said Friday in recalling the event.
Bamfield, along with two other neonatal intensive care unit nurses, a physician assistant and a family medicine doctor, took to social media to document their efforts to help a mother deliver her baby 27 weeks into term.
“We’re used to stressful situations, but not like this. In a controlled environment where we have equipment. So, we were very focused and we just looked up to the flight attendant and Amanda’s like, can we turn around to Sacramento, what’s closer, can we get somewhere now,” Mimi Ho, also a registered nurse at North Kansas City Hospital, said Friday.
At the time of the medical emergency, the flight still had three more hours of travel before landing in Hawaii.
“I think we were just kind of nervous that there was an emergency and we’re over the ocean and that like there was no where to go," passenger Tesha Thomas said.
As passengers learned of the birth, they began gathering items the medical professionals needed.
When the flight landed, medical staff were on the tarmac waiting to take mother and baby boy to the hospital.
“He’s stable, they don’t have a name yet since she wasn’t expecting to have a baby really, but the nurses and doctors have nicknamed him Jet at the hospital," Ho said.
