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Aurora mom delivers baby in car outside coffee shop

Two midwives happened to be passing by and helped
Posted at 10:06 PM, Aug 02, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-03 00:41:52-04

AURORA, Colo. -- An Aurora baby wasn't going to wait after a wrong turn while rushing to the emergency room.

She was delivered in the backseat of a Pontiac Grand Am, just behind the hospital, while two midwives just happened to be walking by.

Nothing could have prepared Rosa Martinez for the way her daughter would come into the world.

"My mom was honking at everybody," said Martinez, who said her mother made a wrong turn and missed the emergency room entrance when they realized the baby was coming. "Yeah, she saw a fire truck, and got out screaming, 'Help! Help my daughter over here!'"

They were parked on a side street behind the University of Colorado Hospital, across the street from a coffee shop frequented by people who work at the hospital.

"This was my first day on the job as a certified nurse midwife, and we were going to get coffee," said Leah Rashidyan, who said she and Amy Nacht (another Certified Nurse Midwife at University of Colorado Hospital) heard the familiar sound of a woman in labor screaming. "I came ready to catch babies today, and I didn't think it would be in a car."

But the baby wasn't going to wait. They delivered her immediately, in the back seat of the car.

"She pushed once and I helped with the delivery. Leah went to other side by her head to help calm her and help her breathe," said Nacht.

Let's just say natural child birth wasn't part of Rosa Martinez's plan. "No never, never at all," she said.

But she believes this was all part of someone's plan.

"Thank you (midwives). Thank God," said Martinez. "I feel blessed. I feel like events happen in a certain order, and however it happens, maybe it's because it was meant to be that way."

The baby, named Starla because of her dramatic entrance, weighs 6-pounds, 11-ounces.

Mother and baby are doing well at University of Colorado Hospital, but her parents are still working on a middle name. There was some joking about the possibility of "Pontiac."