Whether it’s a water birth, home birth, hypno or hospital birth, there are a variety of helpful classes available to mothers-to-be so they can prepare for the ideal arrival of their baby.This week, however, in a move that will horrify most parents-to-be, it emerged that classes are being offered for the kind of birth no mother ever wants – how to have a baby in a car or by the roadside.It comes after North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple closed its birthing wing due to staff shortages, forcing pregnant women to travel more than an hour and a half to Exeter.Around 300 women who are at least 34 weeks pregnant or high-risk patients have been contacted to make alternative plans.The classes are said to help those couples deliver their babies if they come before they make it to hospital – while driving along the motorway or parked on the hard shoulder, for example.Antenatal teacher Catherine Mchomvu, who runs the sessions, said: ‘It’s about trying to create the birth environment that you would normally have in the hospital or at home, in your car.’ Laura with baby Hollie, who she gave birth to in a car on the driveway of a nearby farmBut hundreds of mothers-to-be in the area took to the streets of Barnstaple last week to protest the closure.Lib Dem MP for North Devon Ian Roome said: ‘Quite frankly, the situation is unacceptable.’Here, three mothers who have given birth on the way to hospital share their jaw-dropping experiences...‘My husband had to veer into a farm and a horse watched me give birth’Laura Luke, 39, is a racing yard worker. She lives in Shropshire with husband Ashley, 42, a builder, and their two daughters Isla, nine, and Hollie, five. Laura gave birth to Hollie in a car on New Year’s Eve 2020. She says: When I had my first daughter, I was induced a week early because I’d been suffering from severe migraines. So, when Hollie was a week late in December 2020, I was more relaxed, thinking we’d head to hospital to have a straightforward birth.On New Year’s Eve I woke up around 5.20am with twinges. I asked my mum to look after Isla, while Ash went to defrost the car because it was four degrees outside.We left the house as it began to get light around 6.10am, but within two minutes of driving down the main road, I shouted: ‘No, it’s happening! We’re not going to hospital!’ Ash said: ‘You are joking?’ but I replied: ‘No, this is serious – pull over!’He steered into the driveway of a nearby farm. Traffic was whizzing past and as Ash started calling the ambulance from the driver’s seat, I opened the door. I had an urge to be standing up straight.I looked up and a horse appeared right next to the car over the fence. I’ve since found out his name was Randolph. Hollie's father Ash was on the phone to the paramedics before he dropped the device and dived like a rugby player to catch herI put one hand on the car and one on the horse to steady myself, and for a couple of minutes it was just me and Randolph, panting out clouds of breath in the cold morning air.It was surreal but also very calm and natural.Ash eventually raced round to my side, still on the phone to the paramedics. I said: ‘It’s going to happen any minute now. You have to put the phone down.’ Within seconds, the baby was out. Ash dropped his phone and dived like a rugby player to catch her.I quickly showed him how to wipe her mouth and face so she didn’t choke on mucus, then he passed her to me, still connected to the cord. I sat back in the car and placed her on my chest to keep her warm.Randolph’s face was a picture. He had snorted as she came out of my body as if to say: ‘What is that?’ but then leaned further over to take a closer look.I had some blankets in the suitcase in the back but, like a scene out of a dark comedy, I couldn’t remember the pin number to the lock. So I just lay there on the front seat waiting for the ambulance.When several turned up at once about half an hour later, the paramedics were all saying ‘Well done!’ to Ash.I did think: ‘Hang on, I had something do with this as well.’ The car looked like a murder scene. We were concerned about Ash in case he was pulled over by the police and had to explain where all the blood had come from.When we reached the hospital, we were checked over but allowed to go home within a few hours.Registering Hollie’s birth was a nightmare because we couldn’t prove we’d given birth in the middle of the road. It took weeks of persuading for them to finally register her place of birth as the street where she was born.I feel for those mothers being given classes about having a baby in the car. It’s probably very dangerous if it’s still moving. I think my foot would have gone through the windscreen if we’d not been able to stop, such is the instinct for your body to be in a certain position.But Hollie loves the fact she had an unusual birth and every time we drive past that spot, she says: ‘That’s where I was born!’‘I was all alone in the car when my son was born with the cord around his neck’Amber Campbell, 48, lives in north-west London with her husband Jamie, 49, and their 13-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son. Amber gave birth to her son on the roadside outside St Mary’s Hospital, London, in September 2014. She says:I suspected my son’s birth would be quick because my first labour with my daughter 19 months earlier had lasted only two hours from start to finish.But at least I’d managed to reach the hospital in time. Because of the speed, I’d asked for a home birth this time but was refused because I had gestational diabetes.I accepted that decision – after all, they are the experts – but was very worried about how quick this birth would be.So when I woke up with my first contraction around 11.45pm one September evening, I knew we had to get to the hospital as quickly as we could. Amber's waters broke going round a roundabout as she told her husband she could feel she was crowning, which is when the baby’s head appearedThat shouldn’t have been too hard – we only live ten minutes away. But to our dismay there was a roadblock.Jamie found himself going round a roundabout twice, and it was on that second round that my waters broke and I told him I could feel I was crowning, which is when the baby’s head appears.At that point, Jamie lived out his Grand Theft Auto fantasies and drove straight through all the street cones towards the hospital entrance. There was a man in a high-vis jacket waving at us to stop, and I’ll never forget the moment my eyes met his as we sped past.My mouth was wide open in horror and so was his, but I think in that split second he saw that I was on all fours in the passenger seat with a huge pregnant belly and about to give birth!Jamie pulled up on the kerb and said: ‘Right, let’s go!’ I screamed: ‘Which part of “crowning” do you not understand?’He ran to get help and I was left all alone in the car. There were no nurses, no paramedics, not even any passers-by.I was terrified but instinct immediately kicked in. I felt the urge to push and within seconds my son was out of my body and had fallen into the seat below me. The light was very dim but I could see he was purple and the cord was around his neck.I’m really not the athletic type, but somehow I was able to reach down, pick him up and with one hand unravel his cord.It usually takes an hour for the placenta to arrive but within another minute I’d pushed that out too.I kept holding my son up, afraid he was going to drown in all the fluid beneath me, and for just a few more moments it was simply me and him.This may sound odd, but there was a strange magical stillness and calmness to it. My daughter’s birth in hospital had been quick, but I’d had nurses and midwives around me. The baby had been weighed, checked, and it was very medical. As it should be, of course.But this was just the two of us for maybe five, ten or even 20 minutes. My husband and I can never agree on the exact timing!When Jamie came running back to the car distraught, he still hadn’t found anyone to help and I could tell from the look on his face that he thought I was still waiting to give birth.But as he reached the car, I held up our son and said: ‘I’ve done it.’ He was shocked but managed to say: ‘Well done, love.’Minutes later, a man walked past – just a regular guy, nothing to do with the hospital – and Jamie yelled: ‘My wife has just given birth! Can you get help?’Thankfully, this man went into the hospital to look for someone. A nurse arrived and her first words were: ‘Oh, we were told that someone was giving birth, not had given birth. You need to go back and get your things.’I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but she didn’t realise that I’d literally just given birth in the car.I was in a mess but managed to get into a wheelchair and was taken to the maternity unit where I was stitched up.We have no idea what time our son was born and on the birth certificate it says ‘Praed Street’ as his place of birth, which is the road just outside the hospital. We did consider calling him Parker but decided against it – there were already too many jokes and puns about cars flying around.Obviously, I would never have chosen that kind of birth, but I loved the extraordinary moment of connection I had with my son. My mum said I was ‘brave’, but I don’t think I was: an instinct simply came over me, and I did what was necessary.Funnily enough, about three years ago I was sitting next to someone at a dinner party and we got talking about births and he said he’d heard an extraordinary story about a woman giving birth in her car outside St Mary’s Hospital. He told the tale and I realised it was my birth.When I told him that he’d met the mother, he looked mortified.‘My mother-in-law was driving. We got stuck behind a bus and nearly turned into a prison!’Gemma Moroney, 45, is a company director. Widowed, she lives in Brighton and has three children – two sons aged 18 and 13 and a daughter aged 16. She says: Labour with my first baby – a boy – was four days long and I had to be induced with an epidural. So when I got pregnant with my daughter two years later, I had no experience of contractions and didn’t know what to expect.A friend had mentioned that when she was in labour, she’d been in so much pain that she couldn’t even bite down on a sandwich. So when I started feeling twinges while at a family barbecue in July, even though I was five days late, I thought I couldn’t be in labour yet.I phoned the maternity helpline and the woman at the other end said I should take a couple of paracetamol. But by now my husband was worried and thought I should go to the hospital.I decided to take a shower and change into my pyjamas, and we called my mother-in-law who said she’d take me in. Gemma gave birth on a car park floor as her mother-in-law ran off to flag down an ambulanceShe parked only two cars away from our front door but by the time I walked from our house to the car, I’d had two strong contractions so I knew things were moving quickly.What followed was like something out of a farce. We lived in London at the time and the hospital was only 15 minutes away from our house. But my mother-in-law wanted to get her bearings by driving the way she knew.So she drove ten minutes up the road to her house first and then set off to the hospital, as I writhed in agony on the passenger seat.Then we got stuck behind a bus. By this time I was practically hanging off the coat hooks in the car in pain with my mother-in-law yelling: ‘Don’t you dare have that baby in this car!’Then she took a wrong turning and we almost ended up going into Wormwood Scrubs prison.When we finally reached the hospital, I was in so much pain.I threw open the car door and a male passer-by could see I was in trouble and asked if I needed help with my breathing. ‘No!’ I yelled. ‘The baby is coming!’I whipped off my pyjama bottoms and he ran off. We never saw him again.By this point I had dropped to all fours on the car park floor and my mother-in-law had run off to flag down an ambulance. Two female paramedics – Liz and Julie – came racing over and that’s when my daughter decided to make an appearance.I remember looking down at my toenails – I’d had a fresh pedicure – and I was furious it had been ruined on the tarmac.Once the baby was out, Liz and Julie admitted that they had never done this before and had only done 30 minutes’ training on how to deliver a baby.My daughter was a little cold in the midnight air but absolutely fine. We were both wheeled into the hospital and had to stay in overnight.It was not the ideal way to give birth. My mother-in-law was genuinely a bit traumatised for weeks afterwards and we still call my daughter the ‘car park drama queen’.