Woman Gives Birth At Local Market Surrounded By 3,500 People

When 28-year-old mother-to-be Kashelle Knox went to her local market to do some shopping, the last thing she expected was to give birth while waiting in line at the Boundary Street Markets in Brisbane, Australia.

Even though Knox was expecting her second child, the baby wasn’t due for another ten days, but the little one chose its own optimal time to enter the world, as Knox told reporters, “After a few contractions I was like, this baby is coming now whether I like it or not.”

When she realised it was happening, Knox wasn’t sure what to do in front of the more than 3,500 market-goers. She said, “I called my midwife and got my friend to call my husband to come and pick me up. We knew this one was going to be faster than my first [childbirth], but not that fast.”

Faster than her first child — that’s an understatement; her second child was born within half an hour. Even before paramedics made it to the market the baby’s head was already poking out, and by the time the baby’s father arrived the child was born.

The manager of the market, David Bostock, told reporters,

“I was closing a stall up when an ambulance drove up the driveway and I rushed out thinking someone was in trouble. The paramedic said someone was delivering a baby beside the Wurst-Meister shop and the café. People took their shirts off and were handing her towels and now they’re all hanging on the market fence on coat hangers all ironed and pressed with beautifully written thank you notes saying ‘thank you very much for helping and supporting the birth of our baby.'”

Knox added that although she felt uneasy in front of all those people –and who wouldn’t? — she accepted the circumstances and just went with it,

“I told my friend I was feeling a bit funny, I was a bit nauseous, and as we were lining up for food I got more nauseous and said “I’m just going to sit here” and I was thinking I just needed to vomit. So I said “I’m just going to lie over there and vomit”. I thought it was hunger nausea, but then I started having contractions.”

One day Kashelle will be able to recount the story to her son of the unusual circumstances of his arrival into the world.