Dr. Amanda Hess has delivered plenty of babies as an OBGYN, but the last thing she expected was to have to deliver a baby while she was in labor herself. Dr. Hess was slipping into her patient gown and getting ready to welcome her second child when she heard a woman in active labor [3] in a nearby room at Frankfort Regional Hospital in Kentucky.

The woman, Leah Halliday Johnson, was fully dilated and screaming, and though her doctor was on his way back to the hospital, there was no time to wait. The baby was in distress, and Dr. Hess stepped in to deliver the newborn [4].

"I just put on another gown to cover up my backside and put on some boots over my shoes, to keep from getting any fluid and all that stuff on me, and went down to her room," Dr. Hess told WKYT.

Dr. Hess actually recognized the woman from her final appointment at her practice the week before, but because Dr. Hess was going to be giving birth as well, she wasn't the scheduled doctor for Halliday Johnson. But the second she heard the woman screaming, it didn't matter — that baby needed to be delivered and Dr. Hess was in the right place at the right time.

"You know I love doing what I do," she said. "I love taking care of mothers and babies and really a lot of doctors are always thinking of their patients even when they're a patient themselves."

The heroic Dr. Hess later welcomed a healthy baby girl — Ellen Joyce — just a few rooms down the hall.