Mother delivers premature baby in car still wrapped in amniotic sac

She says this happens in 1 of every 80,000 births

(Photo: Raelin Scurry)

A Pennsylvania mother's picture showing the premature birth of her baby boy still wrapped in his amniotic sac is going viral.

Raelin Scurry of Pittsburgh was only 29 weeks pregnant -- 11 weeks shy of full term -- when she started having contractions Aug. 5, she wrote in a Facebook post.

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Initially, Scurry figured they were Braxton Hicks contractions and waited for them to pass. She changed her mind when they hadn't 45 minutes later and headed for the hospital.

But the baby had other plans.

"Well the contractions continued to get closer together and more intense and before I knew it I knew it was time to push. I called 911 because I was so scared. They couldn't understand me between the screams with contractions," she wrote.

"So I handed the phone to my fiance. I pulled my pants off and reached down, sure enough his head was right there. I pushed one time and my miracle baby was born. When I looked down I realized he was still completely wrapped in the amniotic sac."

Against the dispatcher's advice to pull over, Scurry told her fiance to keep driving. She figured they would arrive at the hospital before an ambulance could reach them.

"At first the baby was still and all I could do was pray he would be okay. And then I rubbed his face with my thumb through the sac and he pulled his little hands and feet up to his face as if he understood my prayers and wanted to reassure us he was okay," she wrote.

Scurry's baby was born en caul, which she said happens once in every 80,000 births, weighing 3 pounds and 1 ounce. Since then, she said in an Instagram post, he has grown to 4 pounds and 3.8 ounces.

"EJ is making such great progress!" Scurry wrote.