Here’s a story that tops the version of the parent who unwittingly sets a baby strapped in a car seat carrier on top of the car and drives off. That can add a bit of a nightmare to any vacation. It also beats my story of how I dropped my car keys into a toilet –or any of the stories I’ve heard of people accidentally dropping items down a latrine. These are popular Peace Corps tales. It also tops my version of having a baby in New Delhi, India by a long shot–a very long shot, and I took a train ride to Pushcar Pushkar when I was eight months pregnant.
This past Tuesday, a woman headed off the the toilet on a train in India and gave birth without planning to at that particular moment. Unfortunately, she passed out during the activity. When she came to, the baby had fallen through the open hole of the toilet onto the tracks. That was a big problem, made bigger because the train was moving. Her relatives pulled the emergency brake to stop the train.
The baby, eight to ten weeks premature, was later found in the middle of the tracks less than two hours later. She was alive and taken to a hospital. The prognosis isn’t great, according to the doctor, but medical care in India can be excellent, so hopefully the baby will pull though.
This story will probably forever top the stories of “the most exciting thing that happened to you when you were on a trip,” regardless of who you are: the mother, the relatives, the train workers, the other passengers or the baby. My son already surprises people when he tells them he was born in India. I’m glad our version of his birth is more mundane than this one. This baby’s story is really a miracle with a capital M. [via msnbc]