18 Year-old Woman Gives Birth On the Side of the Road
On the side of a road outside the central-Philippine city of Tacloban, next to a paddy field, 18-year-old Ryan Bacate is in a panic. Bacate’s pregnant partner Analyn Pesado, also 18, is lying on the ground and about to give birth— 3 miles from the nearest clinic in Tolosa municipality.
Bacate and Pesado were on his motorbike en route to the clinic after she had gone into labor. A man, also on a motorbike, happened by and rushed to Tolosa to get midwife Norina Malate. When she arrived, the baby was crowning. Malate encouraged Pesado to push. Once the baby emerged, Malate disinfected her snippers with alcohol and cut the umbilical cord. Onlookers helped carry Pesado and her baby, a boy, onto a pickup truck that took them to the Tolosa clinic.
Photographer Lynsey Addario was on assignment for Save the Children, which is helping to rebuild health-care infrastructure in Haiyan-hit areas, and captured the remarkable birth. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Addario. “It was such a community effort. When you see a baby born like that, and it is fine, you’ve got to think: It’s kind of miraculous.”
