Badass Doctor Stops Mid-Childbirth to Help Deliver Another Woman’s Baby

A few months ago, I thought it was badass when a midwife delivered a baby with her hair in foils. The baby had decided to come midway through getting her hair highlighted, so she just ran to the hospital and caught the newborn, then took care of her hair. That story has nothing in the tale of Doctor Amanda Hess, an OB/GYN from Frankfort, Kentucky, who paused mid-childbirth to get up and go to work to deliver another woman’s baby.

According to The Huffington Post, Dr. Hess was in a gown in her hospital room in the maternity ward. If there was ever a time to not be in contact with the office, that was it. But Hess heard that another woman in a nearby room was fully dilated. She was about to give birth, and the doctor wasn’t going to get there in time.

There’s work to be done, so she did it.

Hess hopped out of her hospital bed and put a second hospital gown. She had to wear one backwards because the gown she was wearing was totally open in the back. So she went down to the other woman’s room to catch the baby.

Hess had actually examined the other patient for a check-up a few days earlier. She was not meant to be the OB/GYN in the delivery room, though.

The woman was thrilled to see a doctor so she could stop trying to hold the baby in and could just push.

Once the woman’s baby was safely delivered, Doctor Hess went back to being a patient.

That is the hardest core thing I have ever heard. When I was in labor I could barely remember my own name, let alone how to deliver a baby. Hess was fine, though.

“You know I love doing what I do. I love taking care of mothers and babies and, really, a lot of doctors are always thinking of their patients even when they’re a patient themselves.”

After saving the day with the other woman’s delivery, Hess went back to her room and went back to work focusing on her own delivery. She delivered a healthy little girl named Ellen Joyce not long afterwards.

(Image: iStockPhoto / leoniepow)

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