With resourcefulness that would put MacGyver to shame, a pregnant Tennessee woman used YouTube, an electric kettle, a pocketknife and shoelaces to deliver her own son in a foreign hotel room.
In a viral Twitter thread posted last week, Tia Freeman, 22, of La Vergne said she had already bought plane tickets to Germany for a March vacation before finding out she was six months pregnant. Thinking she had plenty of time before the baby's arrival, she decided to take the trip anyway.
>> Read the thread here (WARNING: Viewer discretion advised.)
According to WTVF and Inside Edition, Freeman, a computer specialist for the U.S. Air Force, initially thought she had food poisoning when she started having cramps en route to Istanbul, where she had a layover, on March 7. The pain only got worse after she landed.
"I make it to my hotel & now I'm sure I'm in labor," she tweeted. "There is no way in the world I'm not in labor because I can barely standup at this point. So I'm in a foreign country, where no one speaks english, I don't know this country's emergency number, & I have no clue what to do."
So she looked it up online.
"In true millennial form I decided to @Youtube it," she tweeted. "If no one else had my back the internet would!"
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Freeman said she got into the bathtub and pushed five or six times before delivering a baby boy, Xavier Ata Freeman. After another Google search, she used an electric tea kettle to sanitize her pocketknife and shoelaces, then cut the umbilical cord.
"It's weird how focused a person becomes when [their] adrenaline starts going," she tweeted. "Because at no point ever did I freak out. Like I just did what I had to do."
The morning after Xavier's birth, Freeman brought him to the airport.
"Immediately, security knew something was up," she told WTVF. "They called in a doctor and nurse, and I called the U.S. consulate."
Freeman and Xavier, who quickly became viral sensations in Turkey, flew back to the U.S. two weeks later after the newborn received a birth certificate and emergency passport, WTVF reported.
"I still really don't understand what's so shocking about my delivery story," Freeman tweeted. "Lol maybe it'll set in one day."
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