Mom Didn't Know She Was Pregnant — Until She Gave Birth At The Grocery Store
She was planning on leaving with food for her family, not another baby.
SelectStock, TrongNguyen, Icons8 Photos | Canva By Lauren Levy
When Ashleigh Miller-Cross was shopping at a local grocery store in 2017, she was just planning on leaving with food for her family, but definitely not with another new baby.
At the time, the Canadian mom had given birth to her first child, Mia, 10 months prior, and had no idea that she was not only pregnant but also already full-term when she headed into a Halifax supermarket.
"I really had no idea," Miller-Cross told reporters during an event at the store. "I presumed I hadn't lost any weight because I only had Mia 10 months ago, so I mean I didn't grow any extra so it's just the same size. I didn't have any cravings."
As she was walking through the aisles, she started to feel intense pain, and then, employees helped her to the bathroom.
"I opened the door and Ashleigh was there and the baby was halfway out," Malcolm Comeau, the store's assistant manager, had shared with the Love What Matters Facebook page. "She just screamed at me, 'I'm having a baby!' and I automatically grabbed my phone and dialed 911."
Luckily, the Bayers Lake Atlantic Superstore has a medical clinic in it and Comeau rushed to get a doctor for the laboring mom.
"I peeked back in; the baby had been born. He was fine. He was breathing," Comeau had shared. "It's like some other instincts take over. You just don't think about anything else. It's like, get help and do whatever you can."
Since his surprise grocery store delivery, baby Ezra was treated to a newborn photo shoot that honored his unconventional grand entrance. The photos show the newborn lying in a grocery basket amidst a bunch of different food staples.
The photographer of the shoot commented at the time, "I was so excited to meet baby Ezra yesterday! He surprised his mother by making his unexpected arrival in a grocery store bathroom!"
As for Miller-Cross, she was just grateful for everyone who had jumped in to help her, saying, "I want to thank everybody who has offered support, everyone who was giving us things. I especially want to thank Malcolm Comeau and the lady who helped me in the bathroom straight away. She was right there with me. Just everyone. The staff at the IWK and also the paramedics who came and helped me."
The Miller-Cross family also donated a year's worth of diapers to the Bayers Lake Atlantic Superstore, so if there's ever another baby born there, the store will be more than ready.
Lauren Levy is a former assistant editor at PopSugar. She's worked on staff at Fast Company, New York Magazine, the Fader, and Apple News. She is the founding Deputy Editor at the radical Jewish quarterly PROTOCOLS.