The Afghan mother went to work aboard a C-17 transport plane carrying evacuees fleeing the Taliban prey in Afghanistan, she told CNN Monday at U.S. Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. U.S. Army Captain Erin Brymer, a registered nurse at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. .
Brymer helped give birth to the baby after the plane landed in Ramstein on Saturday, following a flight from a staging base in the Middle East.
The flight is part of a chaotic struggle to transport people by air to Afghanistan. Ramstein is one of the largest U.S. air bases outside of America and has now become a temporary transit point for evacuees in the United States.
A total of 7,100 evacuees from Afghanistan have so far arrived at the base, the Ramstein Air Base Public Affairs Office told CNN on Monday. The base is approaching its capacity of 7,500, the office said, after 36 flights carrying evacuated people landed in recent days.
Brymer told CNN that she gave birth to countless babies in hospital conditions, but this was her first “in the wild.”
He said his team realized a plane would land in ten minutes with a mother who had been a part.
When the team arrived on the plane, the mother was crowned in the front of the plane, surrounded by a group of evacuated women holding their shawls to protect their privacy. “It was a beautiful show to watch,” Brymer said.
The team evaluated the patient and concluded that they “passed the point of no return” and decided to deliver the baby right there on the plane. “That baby was going to be delivered before we could move him to another facility,” Brymer said.
Brymer said he tried to reassure the woman by making eye contact with her and letting her know “that everything is fine and that she can give birth to this baby safely.” The medical team told her “we were ready for her when she was ready,” Brymer added.
The baby was delivered within 10-15 minutes after the plane touched down, Brymer said. When the delivery was made, the plane had “exactly the same photos you see” of the evacuation flights, full of hundreds of people, Brymer added.
When asked when she realized things would be fine for the baby and the mother, Brymer said, “When the baby came out screaming, we were able to put her on the mother’s breast and [she was] breastfeeding right away. I was like ‘okay, here we are okay’ ”.
The pilot erroneously announced that the baby was a child and Brymer said he was correcting it. “I mean, she’s a girl,” the pilot said then.
For Brymer, “the whole week has been a whirlwind of emotions” and the team continues to plan for other pregnant women who may need her help.
“Actually, I feel very honored and humiliated to be a part of this mission. And it’s that … pure humanity,” Brymer said. “I mean, we’re people, they’re people. We both want the same things, strong breasts and babies.”
Kabul Airport has been the epicenter of a desperate struggle for people trying to leave Afghanistan in recent days. On Monday, the number of evacuees inside the facility was about 13,000, most of whom are Afghans, a source familiar with the situation at the airport told CNN. The source said the number of U.S. citizens at the airport was now in the few hundred.
CNN’s Sheena McKenzie contributed to this report.