The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:49 PM
Former UT Student Delivers Own Baby In Turkish Hotel Using YouTube
According to CBS19, Freeman had already booked a two-week vacation with friends in Stuutgaart, Germany, and decided that, as long as the baby didn't come early, she would be fine. However, as even the best laid plans go to waste, so did Freeman's.
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Freeman detailed what happened on her Atlanta to Turkey flight in early March.
Tia Freeman
@TheWittleDemon
I still really don’t understand what’s so shocking about my delivery story. Lol maybe it’ll set in one day.
6:17 PM - Apr 24, 2018
38.1K
17.7K people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
On the flight, she began cramping, but she assumed the cramps were due to food poisoning from salmon she ate on the plane. The cramps only got worse, however, as she waited in line at customs and prepped for a 17-hour layover in Istanbul. She decided to Google signs of labor and came to the realization that the cramps were not symptoms of false labor contractions, but actual labor when she booked into the Wow Hotel in Istanbul.
She didn't call for medical officials for many reasons, such as she was in a foreign country and believed no one would speak English. "I didn't know what the country's emergency number was, but thinking back on it that's something I could have probably Google," she said in a tweet.
When she got inside her hotel room, she searched, "How to deliver a baby" and found a video guide and quickly began to prepare for the baby's arrival. Following the YouTube instructions, Freeman filled the bathtub in her room halfway with water and laid down, with her back on the bathroom wall. On Twitter, she said that she only pushed five or six times before the baby came out and floated to the surface of the water.
At that point, Freeman checked and discovered that the baby was a boy, who she later named Xavier Ata Freeman. "He was pretty calm even from the beginning except for when he first floated to the top," she said of Xavier, now seven weeks old. "I was just making it up as I went along."
"Ata" is Turkish for freedom, his mother said.
Once she cleaned the baby and the room, Freeman fed him and went to bed. The next morning, she took Xavier to the airport, where the Turkish press got ahold of the story while Freeman waited to be cleared to go to the U.S. Embassy. That was where she filed for Xavier's passport and birth certificate.
Freeman eventually made it back to the US with Xavier, after completing her trip, and said the baby is "doing great."
She did have some advice for expectant mothers, however, and said if you're traveling during your third trimester, "just bring a bag and be way more prepared than I was."
