Rush hour is never an ideal time to get somewhere in a timely manner, especially while in labor.
Sathya Priya Senthil and her husband, Karthik Lakshmanan, had called a last-minute Uber Monday to take them from New Jersey to a hospital in Manhattan, but it turns out their new baby girl didn’t want to wait to cross the Lincoln Tunnel.
There was no way the family was going to make it to the hospital in time, WCBS-TV reported, so the Uber driver pulled over just outside the tunnel’s toll plaza on the New Jersey side to assist them.
Senthil knew her newborn wouldn’t be delivered in a hospital when she felt the baby crowning amid the “very heavy traffic.”
“I was in pain,” she said. “I felt the baby’s head that was already out.”
In the backseat of the car, Senthil then laid her head on her husband’s lap. “Within a few seconds” of Port Authority Police arriving on the scene, the baby was out, Officer Krystal Armenti said told WCBS.
“It was crazy. It was sort of like a blur,” another officer said. “You have no choice but to act.”
After the baby was delivered safely at 6 pounds, 3 ounces, her parents named her Sailakshmi, which means “goddess of wealth” and also “a quick-minded nature.”
Lakshmanan call the birth “nerve-wracking.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever forget this day,” he said.
Mother and baby are now healthy and resting at the Hoboken University Medical Center. They will soon introduce the newborn to her 8-year-old sister.
(H/T: WCBS-TV)