Canadian doctor helps delivery baby on Calgary-bound flight

On November 14, a KLM Airbus 330 was en route from Amsterdam to Calgary when flight attendants asked if there was a physician on board.

A 19-year-old woman, who spoke no English, was in labour in one of the airplane's washrooms.

Fortunately, Erin Sullivan, a first-year resident at Victoria Hospital in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and former emergency and critical care nurse, was on board and willing to help. So were a handful of nurses and another physician, who went to the cockpit to consult with an obstetrician over the phone.

"As soon as I looked at her, I knew that something was happening," Sullivan told the National Post. "She was pale. She was sweating. She looked frightened."

Despite the language barrier, the woman in labour was able to communicate that she was six months pregnant.

"I politely asked the flight attendants to clear out business class as fast as they could, and got her positioned between the last two rows, because that was the widest area we had," Sullivan told CBC News. "Thank goodness for the extra leg room in those sections."

Moments after Sullivan opened the airplane's medical kit and put on sterile gloves, the woman gave birth, without complications, to a healthy baby boy. He appeared to be further along than six months.

"Of course, everything was written in Dutch," Sullivan told the National Post. "If you had been watching, I'm sure it would have looked like a total gong show. The flight attendants were tearing through every medical kit on board, translating and asking, 'Do you need this?'"

Because the medical kit only contained one medical clamp — the doctor required two clamps to properly clamp and cut the umbilical cord — the makeshift medical team had to think creatively.

One of the nurses had an idea.

"She said, 'Wait, I know,' and she grabs her purse and she's fumbling through it and she pulls out one of those plastic clasps you use to reseal potato chip bags with, and I'm like 'Perfect!'" Sullivan recalled, crediting her experience as an emergency nurse in remote Arctic communities for her ability to adapt to using what was available.

"Up north we had to do a lot of MacGyver-ing when we ran out of supplies and things like that," she told CBC News.

The flight was diverted to Yellowknife where the mother and baby were taken by ambulance to the hospital. After a short delay, the flight continued on to Calgary.

Northwest Territories Transportation spokesperson Earl Blacklock spoke with 660News the next day and said both mother and child were doing fine.

"It doesn’t happen very often, airlines don’t like to convey people that are full term so it's something they try to avoid," Blacklock said. "In terms of a polar flight touching down in our city, this is the first to our knowledge."