It reads like a sitcom story line:  Pregnant woman gets stuck somewhere because of some crazy circumstance, goes into labor and delivers her baby on her own. But for Abby Wellington, a 34-year-old pediatrician and second-year neonatal fellow from New Jersey, this was no TV episode.

Last Monday, while Hurricane Sandy took down power lines and home across the East Coast, Abby gave birth to her second child.

Around 9 p.m. on October 29, she and her husband Stephen Olefson were laying in bed and listening to the wind beat on their door. Their house had lost power and had little running water. All of a sudden Abby felt some stomach pains, and the pain returned five-minutes later. At Stephen’s suggestion, Abby ran a warm bath and told her to get comfortable.

“I didn’t realize I was in labor until halfway through,” Abby told the Huffington Post. ”All of a sudden, it just got very intense. Either something was wrong and we needed to leave right away, or I was about to deliver, which I just couldn’t wrap my brain around.”

With a due date of October 30, the couple, already parents to a 2-year-old son, had prepared for the worst. They met Abby’s OB and physician’s assistant, who gave the couple some sterilized gloves just in case. That evening, they put the gloves and some other household items to use.

“My wife said, ‘You know those potato chip bag clips? Let’s just find them and keep them out.’ So now we have gloves and a potato chip clip to clamp the umbilical cord. And we were thinking, ‘This is totally far-fetched, but at least we have it,’” Stephen says.

Around 10:30, Abby knew she was about to give birth. While most moms-to-be would have freaked out, Abby remained calm. Stephen asked a neighbor, who’s a physician’s assistant, to come to the home to help. Together, they delivered her 8-pound baby Henley in less than 30 minutes. Given her experience, both personally and professionally, Abby knew what to do.

“Once the baby was out, I became my neonatologist self and told them what to do: Clamp the cord! Get towels! Get a hat!,” Abby recalls.

“Fifteen minutes later, in comes the ob-gyn from upstairs, in come all of these police and ambulance people, and we’re sitting in the bathroom with two potato chip clamps on each end of the umbilical cord,” Stephen says.

The ambulance eventually transported Abby and Henley to a nearby hospital. Can you believe Henley was one of several babies born healthily during Hurricane Sandy?!

Did you /do you have a birth back-up plan in case of an emergency? 

Plus, more from The Bump:

How to Know You’re in Labor

20 Babies Saved During Hurricane Sandy

More Amazing Birth Stories

As I got towards the end of my pregnancy with my son, I thought I knew how the delivery, hospital stay and the early days of parenting would go.

There are two lists. The first is what you want to happen. The second is what actually happens! I thought my water would break, I’d start timing contractions and go into the hospital when they were close together. I thought I’d labor there for a few hours, beg for an epidural and spend a couple of hours pushing. I thought we’d have lots of visitors in the hospital. I thought, once home, our son would sleep in the bassinet in our room. I thought I would breastfeed — maybe I’d struggle a little bit, but eventually he and I would catch on. I thought I would get home and hunker down.  I thought, I thought, I thought…

Not all that happened. My doctor wanted to induce labor. All of us in the room thought I was heading for a c-section after my blood pressure resembled the stock market ticker and I stayed at three centimeters dilated for hours. (I got one thing right — I did beg for an epidural!). We didn’t have too many visitors in the hospital — a few, but not loads and loads. Breastfeeding did not go well. I knew before delivery that I was having a small baby, but we didn’t expect him to be under six pounds, to wear preemie clothes and to be too small for his car seat. When we got home, my son hated the bassinet. And after the first few days home, forget hunkering down. I just had to get out of the house, so we took frequent walks and even shopped at Target.

Now you’d think, after all that, I’d be telling moms-to-be not to have any expectations, but I’m not. Make a birth plan. Talk to your doctor as your time draws near. Keep communicating with the hospital staff during your stay there. Most of what I wanted actually happened, but not all of it. At some point, you realize that you chose your doctor and medical team for a reason and you’ll have to trust them in the heat of the moment. At some point, you also realize that you have to make adjustments to your ‘life with baby’ plan.

Have a vision for how you want things to go, but hold onto it loosely. Changes to your birth plan, or your sleeping or feeding arrangements don’t have to be the end of the world!

Did your baby’s birth and first weeks go as you’d expected? How did you deal with any changes to your plans?