Apple Watch used to assist in-flight surprise labor & delivery

Image Credit: Hawaii Pacific Health/KHON2

An unexpected birth on a flight across the ocean required doctors and nurses to employ clever uses of on-flight items, including an Apple Watch, to keep the newborn stable.

Raymond Mounga was born 11 weeks early on a Delta flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Honolulu, Hawaii on April 28, to Lavinia Mounga, who didn't even know she was pregnant.

Both the baby and mother were fortunate, as a physician and three neonatal nurses were on board, and they sprung into action to keep the infant stable until the flight touched down in Hawaii.

"I went back there first, and she is holding a baby, underneath the toilet almost." NICU Nurse Lani Bamfield told KHON 2. "And so I'm yelling, 'Mimi! There's a baby, and it's little!'"

Dr. Dale Glenn, a family physician at Straub Medical Center, helped the nurses devise a plan to keep the newborn safe.

"None of the equipment we have was suitable for a premature baby, and this baby was born at 29 weeks instead of the normal 40 weeks, right?" said Dr. Glenn. "So we made baby warmers out of bottles that were microwaved. We used an Apple Watch to measure the heart rate."

Once the plane touched down, Lavinia and her newborn were taken to Kapiolani Medical Center, where the newborn will live until he's ready to go home.

"It's been kind of crazy since that happened," said Mimi Ho, one of the NICU nurses that assisted with the infant on the flight. "And as soon as she started tearing up, we did, and she called us family and the baby's aunties, and it was just really sweet."

The Apple Watch is often credited with saving lives in unusual situations. In February of 2020, it was reported that an Oklahoma middle schooler was alerted that his resting heart rate had reached 190 beats per minute. After seeking medical attention, it was discovered the teen had Supraventricular Tachycardia, which was corrected with an eight-hour surgery.

In January, a cyclist in the U.K. used his Apple Watch to call for help while clinging to a tree after being swept into a river during a flood.

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