Georgia mom opens up about giving birth in car: 'A moment of shock'
Georgia mom Deshai Fudd thought she had an idea of what to expect when she started having contractions one day in late November last year.
Fudd already had two children, but to her great surprise, she and her husband Loston Fudd welcomed their third child not at the hospital where they expected to be, but in the car, in traffic on the way there.
"I gave birth to my baby girl in the car on the way to the hospital," Fudd wrote in a Jan. 16 TikTok post. "We got stuck in traffic and had to flag down police for an escort. We made it to the hospital and she was in mint condition! Thank God! We even got discharged the very next day!"
"She met her big sister and brother who love her very much," the video post continued. "This was very scary but we are blessed to have another healthy, beautiful addition to the family! 🥰 We can't wait for her to grow up and hear her crazy birth story 🤣."
Fudd recalled to "Good Morning America" that earlier that day, she had told her husband, a security guard, to go to work as usual and that she'd call him if she needed him.
"Every other baby, I was in labor for a very long time. With my son, I was in labor for three days, and the hospital is pretty far, so I was like, I don't want to go up to the hospital and just get sent right back and we'd be driving back and forth all day," the 23-year-old mom explained.
As luck would have it, Loston Fudd got off work early and by the time he made it home, Deshai Fudd said she had been having contractions for about five hours and told him to get ready to leave for the hospital.
"We got in the car and the GPS said [it would be] about 30, 40-minute drive because there was traffic," Deshai Fudd recalled. "And about 10 minutes into the drive, my water broke and she just came right out."
Ready or not, little Dariya Fudd made her big entrance on Nov. 29, when her mom was 38 weeks along.
Deshai Fudd said initially, her husband panicked and she herself wasn't sure how to respond.
"He's like, 'Oh my gosh, what do I do? Is she OK? What's going on?'" she recounted.
"There was a moment of shock but I was just like, 'Let's just get to a hospital because I don't know what to do right now.'"
The couple found themselves in "standstill traffic" and it took them another 15-20 minutes to reach Emory University Hospital Midtown near downtown Atlanta.
"After we calmed down a little -- because it was a pretty long ride after the fact -- I started to text my family and let them know what happened before we even made it to the hospital," Deshai Fudd said. "And my sister in the group chat, she was like, 'Can we get a picture or video or something?'"
That's when Deshai Fudd recorded the clip she ended up sharing in her viral TikTok post, which has since been viewed over 11 million times in two weeks.
Thankfully, the Fudds managed to reach the hospital safely and Deshai Fudd said a traffic officer helped them flag nurses who came out to meet the Fudds at their car.
"They just came out and cut the umbilical cord right there in the car and wrapped her up in some blankets," Fudd said. "They put me in a wheelchair and took us up. And they did all their normal checks when a baby comes and everything was good."
"She passed everything with flying colors," she added.
A little over 24 hours later, mom and baby girl were on their way home again -- and two months later, Deshai Fudd said Dariya is starting to get to know her older siblings, Demiah and Lamell, and transition to tummy time.
"[The older kids] like to look at her, maybe play with her hands or something and then hold her every now and then," she said.
As for why she wanted to share Dariya's dramatic entrance on social media, Deshai Fudd said she simply felt compelled to.
"I feel like maybe God just put it on me to share it because I was feeling pretty down about the situation and all the comments and love and views and everything I've been getting, I could've never imagined that that would've happened," she said. "It just makes me feel so much better about the situation."
