I used YouTube to help deliver my baby

Tia after giving birth

A new mum claims she used YouTube videos to deliver her own baby after going into labour alone in a hotel room.

Tia Freeman, from Nashville, told Newsbeat she was "in autopilot" and the birth was "all kind of a blur".

She initially told her story in a series of tweets, where she claims she mistook the start of her labour for food poisoning.

Both Tia and her baby boy are both now doing well.

It began with a pregnancy test, a trip to Germany, and a layover in Turkey.

22-year-old Tia says she didn't realise she was expecting until towards the end of pregnancy.

"I found out mid-January," she tells Newsbeat.

"I gained just under 20lbs (5kg) the entire pregnancy, so weight gain was little indication."

In fact, Tia thought the weight gain was normal "seeing as though I hadn't been to the gym in a while".

But eventually, "it started to round out in the typical pregnancy fashion", prompting her to take a test.

Despite learning the news, Tia claims she was "in denial" and decided not to tell anyone.

Instead, she went on a trip to Germany, believing she'd be "all good in the hood" if the baby came on time. But things got tricky when she began experiencing cramps during her 14-hour flight.

Tia thought it might be food poisoning - but by the time she'd landed in Turkey, her layover destination, she was sweating and felt like she was about to vomit.

It was then that she realised she was in labour (after a quick Google, of course).

Arriving at her hotel with "no clue what to do", Tia didn't go down the obvious route of calling for medical help.

"In true millennial form, I decided to YouTube it," she tweeted.

Tia says she filled up the tub with warm water, grabbed some towels, and found some comfortable birthing positions from the internet.

By the time she started pushing, Tia claims her contractions were already a minute apart. While she tweeted that she'd "never felt any pain like this in my life", she also said the birth of her son "happened pretty quickly".

Despite the shock, Tia says she "wasn't scared" - she even used the internet to deliver the placenta.

And then she improvised, using shoelaces to help cut the umbilical cord.

"Every hotel room has an electric kettle," she tweeted. "So I just boiled some water to sterilise the laces so that I could use them as clamps."

She called her son Xavier.

When she returned to the airport for her flight the next day with her "fresh" baby, she says the airport workers were "freaking out".

"They thought I was a human trafficker trying to smuggle out a baby."

After persuading them she wasn't, Tia says Turkish Airlines paid for a two week stay at a hotel in Istanbul - and she got checked out by a medical team there.

"The staff there were absolutely amazing. They helped me with my bags, and would deliver food to my room if he started crying while I was in the dining area eating."

While Tia seems to have taken the whole thing in her stride, those following the story on Twitter haven't been quite so calm.

Xavier's now a month old and both he and Tia are doing well.

"I think my adrenaline and instincts carried me through it. It was all kind of a blur. I was in autopilot."

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