Sky-high start
Little Alex was born on a plane!
Alinta Newson dreamed her first ride on a plane would take her to an exotic location for a beautiful holiday, but it turned out that her inaugural flight was far from relaxing.
Clutching her devoted partner Matt Dennis’ hand, a terrified Alinta, 22, made history when she gave birth to her precious son on board a plane, 4500 metres up in the air last month.
“I’d never been on a plane before so I was really, really scared,” she recalls. “Matt was as well but he was great, assuring me everything was going to be alright. By the time we took off the pain had blocked out the fear anyway.
“I just hoped the baby would hold off for the flight so we‘d make it to hospital.”
Alinta was eight days away from her due date of June 15 when she started experiencing severe stomach cramps while watching a football match in her home town of Walgett, in northern regional NSW.
She assumed they were just pressure pains, but Matt, 26, a meat worker, insisted they pop in to the local hospital next door for a check-up, just to be safe.
The first-time parents got the shock of their lives when they realised Alinta was already in the throes of labour.
“I couldn’t believe it when they said my cramps were contractions
and I was 5cm dilated,” says Alinta. “Everything happened so fast after that it was all a bit of a blur.”
With Alinta’s contractions getting closer by the minute and the nearest well-equipped hospital a four-hour drive away in Dubbo, doctors called the NSW Air Ambulance.
But baby Alexander wasn’t prepared to wait until touchdown! Alinta says they’d only been in the air for 10 minutes when she felt the overwhelming urge to push, and although he’d never delivered a bub mid-flight, flying midwife and nurse Matt Thompson stepped up to the task.
Just 15 minutes after take-off, Alexander Ian Dudley Dennis made his dramatic entrance.
“He didn’t cry or anything at first so I panicked, but then Matt wriggled him around a bit and next thing he was lying on my chest crying,” she says. “It was all pretty surreal and I still can’t believe it happened.”
Weighing in at a healthy 2.8kg, Alexander made history by becoming the first baby in a decade to be born in an airplane with NSW Air Ambulance.
“The hospital staff couldn’t believe it was my first time on a plane and I’d given birth to this beautiful, healthy, perfect baby boy. Matt and I feel so lucky.”