TORONTO — Most moms got flowers, chocolate, maybe breakfast in bed for Mother’s Day. One Canadian woman got a baby. That she wasn’t expecting. While flying to Japan. The woman, identified by Canadian media as Ada Guan, gave birth Sunday over the Pacific Ocean near the end of the 10-hour Air Canada flight from Calgary, Alberta, to Tokyo, according to Canada’s Global News.
Video shot by Japan’s Fuji News Network and posted to YouTube shows Guan being taken from the plane in a wheelchair, followed by father Wesley Branch cradling the newborn and waving to reporters.
“I couldn’t imagine. This happened completely unexpectedly. It turned out to be a beautiful baby girl,” Global News quoted Branch as saying, citing the Japanese report.
Guan started having stomach pains about two hours into the flight, Branch’s mother, Sandra Branch, told Global News.
“She didn’t know what was happening to her,” Sandra Branch told Global News.
She was moved into business class, and doctors who happened to be aboard the flight came to her aid. They hooked up an IV and gave her some Tylenol, Sandra Branch said. But it didn’t seem to help.
Things only escalated from there, Wesley Branch told Global News.
“She told me, ‘Something fell out of me,’ ” Branch said. “I lifted up her pants, and I saw a head, and then I heard, ‘Wah.’
“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I think we have a kid,’ ” he said.
The birth went so smoothly, many passengers didn’t know what was happening until the captain announced the addition to the passenger list over the intercom, the Calgary Herald newspaper quoted passenger You Eun Song as saying.
“He said someone had just given birth to a baby. … He was wishing the best for the new baby,” Song said.
Passengers began to clap for the young family, according to Song.
“We were pumped,” Song said.
Wes Branch told Global News that his girlfriend had gained a bit of weight in recent months but had taken a pregnancy test that came back negative. A recent trip to the doctor also failed to uncover the pregnancy, he said.
“Her belly wasn’t even big. She just thought she was gaining a little bit of a weight. She didn’t think anything out of it,” he said.
The couple named the baby Chloe, according to media reports. Both mother and child are “safe and sound” in Tokyo, Air Canada tweeted.
It isn’t clear when the couple might return to Canada, but one thing is for sure, new grandfather David Branch told Global News.
“They’re not going to tour like they originally planned; they’re not going to be seeing too much of anything there,” he said..
