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A Massachusetts woman unexpectedly gave birth at an unlikely place in Cape Cod

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

If you're having a baby, you have options. You can go to a hospital, visit a birth center, plan a home birth. But have you considered the side of the road? In Cape Cod, a couple of weeks ago, a Massachusetts couple found themselves in this conundrum - water breaking, baby coming, hospital miles away behind a line of traffic. So on Route 6, Danya Mahota pulled over, and his wife, Rebecca, gave birth in the car to a healthy baby girl, their second child. They named her Summer.

Now, you know the shoulder of a highway is not an ideal spot to wait for an ambulance. But donut fear. The couple drove their daughter on her first trip in this world to maybe the most New England of places - a roadside Dunkin'. Once paramedics arrived, Danya Mahota had one more job to do. As he told The Cape Cod Times, they handed me an X-Acto knife, and I, like every Massachusetts father, cut my baby's umbilical cord in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot. I have only one thing to say to that - keep calm, and cruller on.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Ayesha Rascoe is a White House correspondent for NPR. She is currently covering her third presidential administration. Rascoe's White House coverage has included a number of high profile foreign trips, including President Trump's 2019 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, Vietnam, and President Obama's final NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland in 2016. As a part of the White House team, she's also a regular on the NPR Politics Podcast.