Couple recount anxiety, relief after birth of baby in Grab car

As a postnatal nurse of nine years, Madam Afifah Rizqin is no stranger to childbirth.

- Wong Man Shun

But little did she expect she would deliver her own baby, much less in the back of a Grab car.

At 4.40am on Nov 6, about a week before her expected due date, Madam Rizqin, who was 41 weeks pregnant with her second child, instinctively felt it was time to give birth.

The 30-year-old had been experiencing Braxton Hicks contractions, sometimes called practice contractions, in the days before that, but was now experiencing contraction pains similar to the ones she felt during her first child’s delivery.

Some time after 5am, she and her husband, Mr Syazwan, decided to book a Grab ride from their flat in Ang Mo Kio to the hospital as the contractions had become more regular and painful.

The couple initially planned to drop off their three-year-old daughter at her grandmother’s house, but eventually decided to head straight to the hospital as Madam Rizqin felt the “urge to deliver” in the HDB lift lobby, said Mr Syazwan, 32.

Their ride arrived at around 5.20am, and they were barely on the CTE en route to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) when they realised their baby was crowning and close to being born.