Girl born on bus 12 minutes after arriving at service station

A baby has been born on a night bus 12 minutes after it pulled into a service station.

The parents were travelling on a night bus from Toulouse to Brussels to visit family members when the mother went into labour.

The two drivers were alerted by the husband, who told them his wife had begun her contractions in the early hours of 8 May.

Guillaume Moity, the main driver, was able to drive the bus into a nearby rest station, while Jérôme Cavasse, off-duty at the time, called the local emergency services.

Guillaume told local media: “We were 40 kilometres into our journey from Paris when a man came and asked us if we'd be arriving at Brussels soon.

“We asked him why and he said that his heavily pregnant wife was giving birth.

“My colleague Jérôme and I warned the firefighters that we'd be stopping at the nearest service station.

“We'd just arrived at the service station and got all the passengers of the bus when the emergency services arrived.”

According to Flixbus, the bus reached the rest stop at 3:30am and the girl, called Zenep, was born at 3:42am.

“It was lucky, because the baby was born five minutes later. If the firefighters hadn't acted so quickly, we would definitely have had to help the mother,” Guillaume added.

“Looking back, it's impressive. But we told ourselves that we'd prefer to deal with that rather than have a passenger have a heart attack.

“After the birth, we could leave, even if it was a bit chaotic inside the coach!”

All the other customers were able to board the bus and arrived in Brussels with only a two-hour delay.

The mother and baby are now recovering in a hospital in Compiègne.

Flixbus is a German long-distance bus company servicing 28 countries and has carried over 100 million passengers since it’s launch in 2013.

As the firm currently has no policy regarding onboard births, they have offered the child free bus rides until her 18th birthday.