This woman delivered her own baby using YouTube videos

Childbirth is one of life’s most awe-inspiring miracles. Most people these days have a baby with the aid of professionals, such as a doctor or midwife. But one woman found herself all alone when it was time to deliver her son — and so she turned to YouTube.

U.S. Air Force senior airman Tia Freeman delivered her baby with the help of YouTube tutorials and a WikiHow article. Yes, you can DIY anything with the assistance of the internet — including, apparently, childbirth!

The 22-year-old shared her remarkable story on Twitter, and it has since gone viral.  Peppered with funny GIFs and memes throughout, she told the incredible tale of how she came to give birth all alone in an Instanbul hotel room.

Freeman didn’t even realize she was pregnant until she was in her third trimester. The birth control she was taking made it so she did not have a regular cycle every month, so she didn’t think anything was up when she missed a period. Additionally, she didn’t gain much weight. Plus Freeman said she was then in denial about her pregnancy for the next month. Because she had made plans to visit a friend in Germany, she went through with the trip.

Two months ago during her flight, Freeman began having cramps. She had a layover in Instanbul, Turkey, where she headed to a hotel. A Google search was somewhat fruitless, as Freeman learned she may be in labor, or she may be simply experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions — intermittent uterine contractions that be hard to distinguish from those associated with true labor:

Freeman tweeted that “in true millennial form,” she turned to YouTube to help her with her predicament:

Thanks to two YouTube videos — one entitled “How To Deliver A Baby – Epic How To” and the other “How to Deliver a Baby Safely”— Freeman gave birth to her baby in her hotel room’s bathtub:

Freeman only had to push about five or six times for her son, whom she named Xavier, to make his way out. Now that the hard part was over, she pushed the placenta out, which she dropped into a sanitation baggie provided by the hotel. She boiled shoelaces in the electric kettle in the room in order to sterilize them and used them as cord clamps. Talk about resourceful! After reading some instructions from this WikiHow article, she was able to cut the umbilical cord.

At the U.S. Consulate in Turkey, she was able to apply for Xavier’s birth certificate and passport. They were checked out at a hospital as well:

Now that they’re back in the U.S., mother and baby are doing well. Everyone was pretty shocked about Freeman’s surprise pregnancy and delivery, including her mom and Xavier’s father, but they are taking it in stride and pitching in to care for the new member of the family. Both her loved ones and the world at large are super-impressed by Freeman’s unique birth story, but she said she was just doing what she had to do.

“I think slowly but surely, after reading a lot of the responses and comments to my thread, [the shock] finally is [setting in]. Everyone is calling me brave or a superhero, but truthfully I think anyone in my position could have done it,” Freeman told The Daily Dot.

Congratulations to this brave and super-competent new mom!