When baby is ready, he or she will stop for no one—or nothing, not even a natural disaster. No one knows this better than the South Florida mom who gave birth right outside of the hospital. According to an article in Huffington Post, the amazing birth was captured by photographer Emily Robinson.
"It was the first time I ever saw a mother be wheeled INTO the hospital holding her new baby," wrote Robinson on her blog. "It was the fastest, most incredible, beautiful, wild birth I’ve ever had the pleasure to document."
Robinson had been warned that mom-to-be Amy Beth Cavaretta had a quick, relatively easy labour with her first child, so she would make a good candidate to have her birth photographed. Little did either party know she would deliver quite so quickly.
"I did not know that I was going to have a baby on the sidewalk," laughed Cavaretta.
Neither did anyone else. Robinson claimed there was no sense of panic, until Cavaretta leaned against a pillar and announced that the baby was coming. No sooner had her husband fetched a wheelchair than midwife Laurie Ross-Berke held little Sienna Grace's head.
It all happened at breakneck speed, with little more than a minute's warning.
The incredible photos speak for themselves...
Have an especially fast (or s-l-o-w) labour? Spill it.
When Angelina Jolie announced that she'd undergone an elective double mastectomy, the world was stunned. Here was one of the most beautiful and sexy starlets voluntarily having her breasts removed in order to decrease her odds of getting breast cancer.
After all, breasts nourish babies but mostly, in the West, they are culturally synonymous with femininity and sex appeal. Yet even as more and more women sacrifice their mammaries to save their lives, there is a dearth of clothing available to make them feel good about themselves.
According to an article in the Huffington Post, this gap in the market was spotted by Patricia Brett. A former architect and breast cancer survivor, Brett designed a "cross-functional swimsuit line" called Veronica Brett, purely to cater to women like her.
"I wanted to create a really beautiful, high-end product that not only met the needs of breast cancer survivors, but was also a really beautiful line in its own right," says Brett. "I wanted it to be fashion."
Like Jolie, Brett also tested positive for the BRCA1 gene and opted to have a double mastectomy to reduce her risk of getting breast cancer. At 29, her niece faced the same fate. This prompted Brett to take action.
"I was thinking, 'This is crazy that [we] struggle with finding fashionable, sexy, sophisticated apparel because of breast surgical issues,'" said Brett. "All of a sudden this light bulb went off. I thought, 'If I can design a building, I should be able to design a better swimsuit.'"
Brett sketched several designs and met with pattern-makers. But she couldn't have anticipated the outcome. Her niece tried it on and "literally burst into tears."
The specially designed suits feature pockets to accommodate a prosthetic breast; they are made of a thicker fabric and modest style to hide scarring and ensure comfort.
Obviously the market for such suits is limited, so Brett struggled to convince department stores to carry her new line. But smaller retailers, like Kimara Ahnert in Manhattan and ShopBop.com, began stocking her suits and, more astonishingly, many women are snapping up the Veronica swimwear, not just those who've beat cancer.
So for Brett that's a real triumph. She also recalls an email from a customer and survivor whose daughter calls it her 'Baywatch' swimsuit. Take that, Pamela Anderson!
Another ghastly and unspeakable act of violence. This time in broad daylight on a London street, where two Muslim suspects butchered a British soldier. And one woman—a cub scout leader and mom—did a crazy thing: she walked right up to the knife-wielding assailants and talked to them.
According to the Guardian, 48-year-old Ingrid Loyau-Kennett stepped off a bus to confront one of the suspects. She was incredibly calm as she spoke to him.
"...better me than a child. I thought I had better start talking to him before he starts attacking somebody else. I thought these people usually have a message so I said 'what do you want?'" said Loyau-Kennett, who was on her way to visit her daughter in a nearby borough.
She remained strangely unafraid since the men, though armed, were not noticeably intoxicated. Loyau-Kennett claims her goal was to keep the killers occupied and calm while she waited for police to arrive.
"I asked [one of the men] if he wanted to give me what he was holding in his hand, which was a knife but I didn't want to say that," said Loyau-Kennett. "He didn't agree and I asked him: 'Do you want to carry on?' He said: 'No, no, no.' I didn't want to upset him..."
Shortly after she re-boarded her bus, the police did arrive. The men were shot in the legs, and are now being held in custody. The British government has convened to deal with what is being treated as an act of terrorism.
As for Loyau-Kennett... She simply went about her business, annoyed that her bus dropped her off at a different stop.
Were her actions heroic or foolhardy?
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