You never expect to be on a flight where a doctor is needed, but this Canadian doctor experienced just that.
Dr. Aisha Khatib was certainly in the right place at the right time. The Canadian doctor was traveling to Entebbe, Uganda, for a work assignment. She was settled in on her Qatar Airways overnight flight when suddenly her expertise was needed. She heard the flight's crew ask if there was a doctor on board for a medical emergency.
"I look down and I see this woman lying on the seat with her head towards the aisle and her feet towards the window, and this baby's coming out," Dr. Khatib told Inside Edition.
"It was not what I was expecting at all."
Khatib introduced herself to the flight attendants and was brought into the thick of things. It happened so quickly that at first she thought she'd be dealing with someone having a heart attack.
"I didn't know anything about the woman. I didn't know anything about the history. I didn't know how we got to this point,” she recalled.
"So I pretty much jumped right in."
Khatib was soon joined by a pediatric nurse and an oncology nurse who also happened to be on board.
"I'm thinking, 'We need clamps. We need scissors. If we don't have clamps, I need shoelaces.' I'm thinking, 'I need hot water.' I'm thinking, 'Wait, no, I don't need hot water,' but they always ask for it in the movies," Khatib laughed.
"All these things are kind of going through my head like, 'What do I need to make sure we can deliver this baby safely?'"
Thankfully, everything went swiftly. They'd later discover that the baby's mom was a migrant worker from Uganda who didn't know her baby would be coming so soon because she never received prenatal care.
"After they were stable, we moved them up into the business class area, cleaned them up, had a little bit more space, and were able to get mom latched and breastfeeding and skin-to-skin with baby," Khatib was happy to report.
"We monitored her for the rest of the flight, and the baby, and they did well, which was great."
The mom ended up naming her baby Miracle Aisha, after the doctor who brought her into the world under such unusual circumstances.
"I just happened to have a necklace that had my name on it, which was a little gold necklace that said 'Aisha' in Arabic, and so of course I had to give her my namesake, so she remembered the doctor that delivered her up in the air, 35,000 feet, while flying over the Nile," the honored doctor shared.
Dr. Khatib has kept in touch with mom and baby and shared they're continuing to do well.
