Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
EXPRESS DELIVERY!
Mom taken by surprise when baby girl arrives in car outside Miramar hospital
MIRAMAR – Danisha Cotton had everything planned for how her unborn daughter would make her debut next month. But the baby had plans of her own. Rose-Lynn Shylah Brown made a dramatic entrance into the world just after 8 a.m. Monday, being born inside her grandmother’s Nissan Altima right outside Memorial Hospital Miramar.
“This only happens on TV!” a hospital worker told the baby’s grandmother.
When Cotton, 23, of Miami Gardens, started feeling some pain about 6 p.m. Sunday, she chalked it up to false-labor pains known as Braxton Hicks contractions.
About 3 a.m. Monday, though, Cotton started thinking the birth of her third child was imminent. She
reached out to her mother. “I started getting text messages, and it went all night,” said Cotton’s mother, Cherisse Jackson.
Cotton drove herself to her mother’s Miramar home about 7:30 a.m.
She and her family were planning to go to Memorial Hospital West in Pembroke Pines, where Cotton’s obstetrician delivers babies.
But after loading into the car, the family decided to instead head to Memorial Hospital Miramar, which was several minutes closer.
Cotton was uncomfortable during the whole drive to the hospital, wedged in the back seat, sitting next to her kids in their car seats. Her older daughter is 4; her son is 2.
Cotton’s mother, in the front passenger’s seat, was telling Cotton not to push. But then Cotton said she felt the baby in her maternity pants.
It all hit home for her when she heard her daughter say, “She’s pretty.”
Cotton’s stepfather, Cornell Jackson, pulled the car into the ambulance spot at Memorial Hospital Miramar.
Cotton’s mother ran inside and told the emergency room personnel that her newest granddaughter had already arrived — in the parking lot.
An alert was blasted to the maternity ward and an obstetrical critical care team came bursting into the ER, Cherisse Jackson said. She moved out of the path of the medical staff, watching as they rushed to her daughter’s aid.
The emergency room unit scooped mother and baby out of the car and onto a stretcher.
Anna Hoo, the maternity unit’s charge nurse, said Rose-Lynn Shylah wasn’t moving at first, but reacted immediately as the crew started stimulating her.
“Then she started crying and yelling,” Hoo said.
The infant, weighing in at 7 pounds and 7 ounces, scored at the highest levels for baby wellness — not even needing a stop at the nursery, Hoo said.
“She couldn’t wait to meet all of us,” Hoo said.
The episode still had Cotton in awe Monday afternoon. “I went through labor with no pain medication,” she said.
Cotton had labored 12 hours with her first-born child, and then a full day in labor with her second child.
Her grandmother nodded along and gazed at her new granddaughter, now asleep after all the excitement. “I know what we’re dealing with,” she said of the baby. “Ms. Drama Queen.”