Shortly after losing her mucus plug, Jennifer Maestas and her husband jumped into the car to head straight to the hospital

NEED TO KNOW

Jennifer Maestas never imagined going into labor on the side of a Colorado highway — but her baby daughter seemed to have other ideas.

On the morning of Feb. 18, Jennifer, who was 35½ weeks pregnant at the time, lost her mucus plug. She called her husband Ricardo Maestas, who was on a work trip and hopped on the first flight back home. The moment after Ricardo returned home from the airport, Jennifer got into the car and the two headed to their hospital.

“It was literally the moment I heard the garage, and he walked in the door,” Jennifer told CBS News. “Then suddenly my body was like, ‘Now is the time to have this baby.’ Waddled down the stairs, got in the car and just took off.”

Jennifer and Ricardo drove to the Colorado Fetal Care Center at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, Co. because their baby was going to be born with Down syndrome and a heart defect. Luckily, their doula met up with them on the highway.

“She got right behind us and was following us on the way, so that was just a miracle,” said Jennifer.

As they got closer, however, Jennifer and Ricardo realized they wouldn’t make it to the hospital.

“She’s coming. We’re going to have to pull this car over,” Jennifer recalled thinking. “Our doula jumps out of her car, jumps into our car, closes the door. Mind you, she’s wearing a dress, and she’s straddling me in the front seat of our car.”

“Our doula opens the door, and she says, ‘Rick, come catch your baby,’” continued Jennifer. Ricardo was just in time to catch their baby daughter as she was born.

Their daughter Kiana was born healthy and breathing, despite being born on the side of the highway.

“I was like crossing my legs. ‘We need to make it. This can’t happen this way.’ And then the moment she came out, I was like, ‘This is how it was supposed to happen. This is it,’ ” said Jennifer.

Paramedics arrived at the scene and took the family to the hospital.

When Jennifer and Ricardo were about to come home, Kiana caught RSV and was intubated for 12 days. She had severe reflux and underwent open-heart surgery.

Another meaningful part of Kiana’s journey in the Children’s Hospital Colorado NICU was that she was the first baby at the hospital whose care team fortified Jennifer’s own milk using freeze-dried breast milk through Milkify Medical.

After nearly 130 days in the hospital, Kiana finally came home.

“Finally just having our family all together under the same roof is just everything we could have ever hoped for,” said Jennifer.

Now, the family is focused on their future together as they share how miraculous their journey was.

“Every day that we think about the story, it just feels unreal to us,” said Jennifer. “The fact that she has Down syndrome and had this cardiac defect, and still just did miraculously well during that transition.”

“The fact that all of that accumulated in this beautiful story of her being born on the side of the highway, and you know, obviously that turned into a crazy long and wild NICU and hospital journey,” she continued. “But she has been so remarkably strong and capable every step of the way.”