Born at the wheel:
Reports of women giving birth on airplanes, trains, buses and cars are not uncommon. But US woman Amanda McBride may be the only woman to have given birth while she was still driving her car. One day in 2010, Ms McBride left work early to drive to the the hospital when she suspected she was about to give birth, and picked up her husband at home on the way. But just before they got to the hospital her water broke and her husband, Joseph Phillips, took the wheel. “And then, all of a sudden, I heard this little waa-a-a-a (cry),” he said. He steered the car into the hospital parking lot as his wife gave birth to their son in the driver’s seat.
Marathon mums:
Amber Miller was 39 weeks pregnant with her second child when she competed in the Chicago Marathon in 2011. Ms Miller had approval from her doctor to run half the race and walk the other half, and her contractions started a few minutes after she finished the race with a time of a little over six hours, although she beat the time of her husband, who stayed near her side throughout. Ms Miller’s daughter June was born that night. Another American mum-to-be, Susie Weber, 41, rode a bicycle for more than a mile to the hospital before giving birth a few hours later.
Strange ceremonies:
An old Irish tradition stipulates that spitting on a newborn baby will ensure its happiness, while in parts of Africa and the West Indies, a newborn’s umbilical cord is buried and a tree planted over it. A common tradition on the Indonesian island of Bali that a newborn baby’s feet must not touch the ground for the first 105 days – instead the are held aloft continuously by their mothers and other family. At a shrine in India’s Maharashtra state, newborn babies are thrown from top of a high wall to temple followers waiting to catch them in a spread blanket. The ritual is supposed to bless the child with good luck, on the reasoning that it is unlikely to ever have worse luck than being thrown off a building.
Biggest babies:
The world record for delivering the heaviest human baby is held by Carmelina Fedele of Aversa in Italy, who gave birth to a bouncing 22lb 8 oz (10.2 kg) boy in September 1955. More recently, an unnamed baby boy born in Indonesia in September 2009 weighed in at 19lb 3 oz (8.7 kg) and was more than 60 cm “tall” at birth. News reports said his mother was diabetic, and diabetics tend to give birth to larger babies. The largest babies in the animal kingdom are those of the blue whale, which typically weigh more than two tonnes and are about seven metres long.
Competitive childbirth:
In 1926, eccentric Canadian lawyer Charles Vance Miller died and left part of his fortune to the Toronto women who would give birth to the highest number of legitimate children within ten years of his death. The competition became known in the city as the “Great Stork Derby” – after the tale that newborn babies are delivered by storks – and in 1936, four women won C$125,000 each for giving birth to nine children apiece. Two competitors who’d each had 10 babies were disqualified in a court case, including one who had five sets of twins, but with a man who was not her husband.