Three doctors are celebrated as heroes after helping a pregnant teen and delivering her baby into Mexican airspace.
Abigail Amoretti, 17, was boarding Avianca El Salvador flight TA450 at Augusto C. Sandino International Airport in Managua, Nicaragua and was en route to Miami International Airport when the pilot diverted the plane to Cancún International Airport on Thursday.
Dr. Raquel Rodríguez, also from Nicaragua, sprang into action when she heard Amoretti, who was seven months pregnant, moan in pain while in the restroom with her aunt while the plane was 10,000 feet in the air.
According to Nuevo Radio Ya, Rodríguez had spread blankets over the island and left Amoretti on the ground. Then she dropped her pants and noticed that the baby’s umbilical cord was hanging out of the womb.
Abigail Amoretti is being escorted in a wheelchair in Cancún, Mexico, after giving birth to a baby girl Thursday on an Avianca El Salvador flight en route from Managua, Nicaragua to Miami. Her child was not breathing at first, was given CPR for about three minutes, and let out a cry about two minutes later
Dr. Raquel Rodríguez holds the premature baby she and two other doctors helped deliver last Thursday on an Avianca El Salvador flight. She and another doctor performed CPR on the girl for about three minutes because she had no vital signs when she was pulled from her 17-year-old mother’s womb. Both baby and mother do not recover
A paramedic carries the newborn daughter of 17-year-old Nicaraguan Abigail Amoretti
Not seeing the baby’s head, she put her hands through the teen’s vagina and discovered that the newborn’s feet were close to it.
“The girl started pushing, I started giving her directions on how to push, because she was pushing wrong since she was a first timer,” Rodríguez told the outlet.
Rodríguez was then approached by Dr. Suamy Bermúdez, a Honduran national, who offered to help.
Because she’s a dermatologist, Bermúdez took over the breech birth and took the baby out at her feet.
“When the girl came out she was all limp and cyanotic, that is, she was purple from suffering all the time the (mother) had been through the pain and contractions,” Rodríguez said.
“When the doctor takes the girl out, the girl gets stuck by the umbilical cord. That was the hardest part. The doctor had to find maneuvers to remove the head.’
A baby was born on Thursday aboard an Avianca El Salvador flight
Dr. Suamy Bermúdez (left), a Honduran national, and Dr. Raquel Rodríguez (right), from Nicaragua, where two of the three doctors who helped deliver a 17-year-old girl’s premature baby on a flight
Abigail Amoretti was on her way from Nicaragua to Miami on Thursday when the plane was diverted to Mexico as she went into labor
The doctors noticed that the baby had no vital signs and Rodríguez immediately performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save her life and one of the two doctors massaged her heart.
She noticed that the child began to breathe on its own when she noticed movement on her chest.
Rodríguez yelled that the baby was alive and five minutes later she let out her first cries.
“When the girl was pink and breathing on her own and making movements with her mouth, we had to separate the placenta,” Rodríguez said.
Rodríguez said flying on to Miami was not an option as they were more than an hour away. Cancún as 40 minutes. They encountered a storm on the way, but made it out without any problems.
She remained by the side of the baby and her mother until paramedics boarded the plane to have them rushed to a Cancún general hospital and was reportedly in stable condition.
Video footage shows passengers cheering the mother as she was pushed across the island in a wheelchair while a paramedic carried the girl, who was wrapped in an emergency blanket.
Amoretti took to Facebook on Sunday to say her daughter was a “bit delicate” and to thank her well-wishers.
“Thank you so much to all those people who have prayed and put me and my girl in the hands of God, thank God you are fine,” she wrote. “The girl is a little delicate, but nothing is impossible for God. He has taken care of us and with the help of God I will soon get out of this process that is so hard on my life.”