"Everything was meant to be. I was supposed to get my baby this way," Shelcie Holbert tells PEOPLE

North Carolina Woman Gives Birth 3 Months Early During Trip to N.Y.C. as Local Moms Come to Her Aid

A first-time mom-to-be had one of the most stressful experiences of her life when she visited New York City on a business trip in June at 23 weeks pregnant.

Shelcie Holbert, a 23-year-old sales representative for Kiehl’s from North Carolina, traveled to N.Y.C. on June 17 and was preparing to visit the company’s flagship store when she felt something wasn’t right.

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Holbert walked into the emergency room at Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital, where doctors quickly discovered she was having contractions and put her in an ambulance to Mount Sinai West, which was better equipped to deal with preterm labor.

Doctors soon learned that Holbert, who was due to give birth on October 12, was already three centimeters dilated.

“I felt like I was overthinking until they said that,” Holbert tells PEOPLE.

To increase her baby’s chances of survival, Holbert and her doctors delayed birth for another week, enough time for her husband, Jake Wallace, an Army vet, to fly in and be by her side.

“I just wanted the comfort of being near my home at least,” Holbert says of her time in the hospital. “My husband didn’t even have anywhere to go. I wanted to have my baby … I wanted to go home. But for babies that small, every day makes a difference.”

Eight days later, the medication her doctors were giving her to stop the contractions was working so well that Holbert had a plan to fly home and check into a hospital in North Carolina. But that morning she went into labor.

“I was looking up plane tickets to go home and started getting contractions,” she says.

On June 26, Holbert and Wallace welcomed a 1-pound, 9-ounce baby girl, Rosalie Grace, and she was immediately transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Image zoom Shelcie Holbert’s daughter, Rosalie Shelcie Holbert

In addition to caring for their daughter, the couple also had to find a way to live in New York City until around Holbert’s original due date or longer. Their initial hotel cost $4,000 for one month.

After Holbert and Wallace befriended a fellow NICU parent, Kim Kaplan, and she posted about their situation in her local mom Facebook group, word spread.

Soon another mom named Jenna offered Holbert and Wallace her second apartment. Yet another mom, Toby Baldinger, didn’t want them to worry about cooking, so she gave a local diner her credit card and instructions to deliver them dinner every night for two weeks, taking another substantial expense off the couple’s plate.

“We set money aside for our baby, but we didn’t plan for any of this,” Holbert says.

Other local women brought the new mom and dad home-cooked food and donated gift cards and postpartum and nursing clothing. Holbert only had three days of all-black outfits that she’d packed for her business trip. A friend from Holbert’s childhood also started a GoFundMe for the family.

“I felt so helpless,” Holbert says. “But then it was like one good thing led to another. Everything was meant to be. I was supposed to get my baby this way.”

Image zoom Shelcie Holbert, Jake Wallace and their daughter, Rosalie Shelcie Holbert

In the past month, Rosalie, who now weighs 2 pounds, has also hit other big milestones. Two weeks after she was born, mom was finally able to hold her — “That’s when it felt real,” Holbert says — and on Sunday, she kissed her baby daughter on the head for the first time. “I was so emotional, those little things people take for granted.”

As a southerner, Holbert says she had “this misconstrued idea of what New Yorkers are like. But I’m happy my daughter is a New Yorker now because I’ve received so much help here from total strangers.” Holbert recently made one of those strangers, Jenna, Rosalie’s godmother.