Woman Delivers Baby Alone Using YouTube Tutorials During International Trip

A Tennessee woman who shared the details of the emergency birth of her child in a hotel room during an international trip in March has gone viral.

Tia Freeman, a computer specialist in the U.S. Air Force, on Tuesday, posted the story of the birth of her child in a series of messages on Twitter, which has since been shared thousands of times among the online community as of Friday.

The 22-year-old boarded a flight from Tennessee to Germany in March when she began to feel sick on the plane. She claimed she didn't know she was pregnant before she purchased the tickets.

"I was like, I'll just sleep it off, sleep cures everything," Freeman she told WTVF, a CBS affiliate in Nashville. "So I go to sleep and wake up as we're landing and I notice my cramps have gotten astronomically worse."

Freeman said she made it off the flight and into her hotel room in Istanbul where she realized that her stomach pains were contractions. But, being alone in a foreign country and having no knowledge of hospitals in the area, she turned to the internet for help.

"I literally was on YouTube typing like how to deliver a baby," Freeman said. "Scroll, scroll, scroll and yup, that video looks like they know what they're talking about."

Freeman filled the hotel bathtub with water for a birthing station and grabbed two towels, one to bite down on during the delivery and another to coddle the newborn.

Freeman said she pushed about five times before the head of her baby boy surfaced. Then, with the help of an online article, Freeman said she used shoelaces and a sterilized pocketknife to cut the baby’s umbilical cord.

After the delivery, she slept through the night and in the morning took a cab to the airport looking to head home.

"Immediately, security knew something was up," she said. "They called in a doctor and nurse and I called the U.S. consulate."

Istanbul officials issued the baby an emergency passport and the two were then rushed to a nearby hospital where they spent two weeks for care before traveling back to Tennesee.

Freeman and her baby who she named Xavier Ata Freeman are both healthy. She said despite the conditions, she "probably wouldn't change a thing."

"The experience taught me so much. I learned how to be resourceful and calm under pressure. I was able to bond one on one with my son from his first breaths," Freeman told the Independent. "I’m thankful that everything went well and I was able to deliver a healthy baby."