Woman gives birth to baby on board Delta flight, with help from firefighters, nurse

Liliana Castañeda Avilia's baby wasn't supposed to come for weeks.

It’s a birthday this family won’t soon forget.

An expectant mom and her husband went through quite the ordeal earlier this month, when they unexpectedly welcomed their baby while on board a commercial flight.

Liliana Castañeda Avilia’s water broke and she went into labour mid-flight while on her way home from Mexico to North Carolina on Nov. 14.

Avilia told NBC her due date wasn’t until Dec. 3, and the beginning of labour caught her completely off-guard.

With the help of a nurse who was also on board, the new mom laboured for more than three hours.

“(The nurse) was like, ‘Yeah, the baby girl is coming, it’s on its way.’ And he was like, ‘Don’t try to push, because if you push more the baby will come out.’ So I held those contractions for like three hours and 30 minutes on the way here,” Castañeda said in a video posted to Facebook Wednesday by the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department.

Crews aboard the Delta flight were able to call 911 in Atlanta, where the plane was touching down for a layover, and first responders were waiting at the gate when it arrived.

“The airplane was coming in exceedingly fast, faster than normal, so we knew there was an emergency, we knew people were nervous,” said Juanetta Nash, one of the firefighters who greeted the plane.