An Alaska woman who gave birth while on a plane chose a fitting name for her child.
Chrystal Hicks, a 35-year-old mother of three, began experiencing contractions in her Glennallen home last week. Glennallen, Alaska, is an area with less than 500 people, and Hicks told KTUU that she has made the approximately three-hour drive to Anchorage for her past births but had to be airlifted this time.
“I was just having contractions, and it wouldn’t stop. And it kept getting stronger,” Hicks said. “And they thought we were going to make it, but we obviously didn’t make it very far.”
After her water broke, she ended up giving birth in the air to a 5-pound, 10-ounce boy, whom she decided to name Sky Airon Hicks after the ordeal.
“It was shocking. It was really weird at first — I didn’t know what to think,” Hicks said. “But everybody kept talking about the baby on the plane.”
Hicks said that while filling out birth certificate forms, she wasn’t sure what to put as Sky’s place of birth. Although the pilot had noted the latitude and longitude of where the plane was when Sky was born, Hicks opted for a more traditional location.
“I just put Anchorage,” she explained. “I didn’t want to put ‘on a plane’ or ‘in the sky.’”
“I think when he’s older, he might get embarrassed about it, but I think it’s funny now,” Hicks said. “I think even when he graduates, he’ll be known as [the] baby born on a plane.”
