Giving birth on the side of the road, in full view of passing strangers, was something Jayme Taylor thought only happened to other people.
But on October 21, she found herself in exactly that predicament – delivering a baby son, with the help of her partner and a passing police officer, in the front seat of a parked car!
“I would never have thought this child would have been born on the roadside, but it was an amazing experience and I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” the besotted mum tells Woman’s Day as she introduces her precious boy Kado Shakur.
The 28-year-old’s birth drama began just before 7am, when her partner Harley Smith, 20, a farm worker, was out milking cows. A heavily pregnant Jayme began to feel cramps and immediately texted Harley.
He recalls, “She said she was having some pains, but they were probably just Braxton Hicks, so I thought I’d finish off the milking, do the hose-down and get on my way home.”
Harley was about to start feeding the cows when Jayme called again. This time, the message was more urgent. “You need to come now!” she ordered. Luckily, Harley was only minutes away from the couple’s home in Midhurst, a small town 40 minutes from the closest hospital in New Plymouth.
But Jayme – who is also mum to Charlotte, 12, Jordan, eight, and Chloe, six, from previous relationships – tells, “My mum lives in Inglewood, so once he got home, I told him to drive us straight there. My plan was to at least get to Mum’s, but halfway there, I told Harley that I needed to push. He said, ‘You can’t!’”
Meanwhile, Jayme’s mum Carol had left her house to get some petrol, in case they ran out. They had planned for her to follow them to the hospital.
Travelling at speeds of up to 120km through rural back roads and without a licence, Harley finally pulled up outside Carol’s house. Flinging himself out of the driver’s seat, he raced around to the passenger side to recline the seat for Jayme.
It was then they spotted the police car. Laughs Harley, “I ran up to him and said, ‘Hey, mate, my partner’s in the car having a baby. Can you give us a hand?’” Modesty, says Jayme, was the last thing on her mind.
“It was by the high school. There were all these boys walking past, but I knew I had to push, so I whipped my pants off and had my legs up on the dashboard!”
By the time Harley and Constable Clinton Parker got back to the car, the precious 3.3kg bundle had arrived, with Jayme untangling her son’s umbilical cord, which had been wrapped around the wee one’s neck.
“I definitely didn’t think I was going to have such a quick birth,” grins Jayme. “All my other labours were quite long, but with Kado, the contractions just came on – there was no building up to it.”
Still amazed by Jayme’s handling of the situation, Harley says proudly, “She just popped him out! It was pretty crazy, pretty out-there but pretty cool as well.”
An ambulance, which had been dispatched as the drama unfolded, then took the shocked mum and her newborn to New Plymouth Hospital, where they were both given a thorough check-up.
Back at home, it’s clear that the couple are loving the new addition, whose middle name was inspired by Harley’s favourite rap star Tupac Shakur.
And a still-euphoric Harley says the grand entrance made by his first child is something the couple will always treasure. An added poignancy was the fact the “birthing suite” was his late step-father Christopher Yardley’s Holden Commodore.
“He passed away about four months ago, but I think he would have thought it was cool and been quite proud that his car was part of it,” explains Harley.
And to other new fathers who might find themselves in a similar situation, Harley has this bit of advice to offer: “Just keep calm – the best you can do is get the job done. It’s a really amazing thing to experience.”
