But once again, real life kicks fiction's ass when it comes to situations that seem too absurd to be real. Here are five real women who stretched the bounds of believability by ...

The "woman goes into labor in some crazy location" bit is so cliche on TV shows that you'd think no story could shock us. We've seen babies get born in elevators and the back seats of cabs, there was that shadow baby thing on Game of Thrones ...

5 Giving Birth in a Tree, During a Flood

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You see catastrophic floods on the news and you can only imagine what it's like to be those people huddled on their rooftop, or paddling around their submerged house in a canoe. But we bet we can think of one woman who can claim the title of Most Harrowing Flood Situation Possible.

It happened in 2000, when Mozambique suffered the worst floods in 50 years. A woman named Sofia Pedro was very, very pregnant at the time. She also failed to make it to shelter.

Via Believe it or Not

"Yeah, I'm daring you to complain about anything at all, ever, for any reason."

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Instead, she was caught by the floods and forced to climb a tree to escape the rushing water, which some of us couldn't have managed under the best of circumstances, let alone while panicked and very, very pregnant. She then had to stay in that tree for three freaking days.

Again, just the circumstances we have so far stretch this beyond any reasonable person's imagination: three days, while pregnant, starving, terrified, soaking wet, with a devastating current of water just feet below you, ready to sweep you away if you tumble out.

And then she went into labor.



An actual photo from the scene.

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While that may sound like extraordinarily bad luck in an already terrible situation, it's actually just the body's natural way of saying "We're ditching everything that can turn us into an anchor." So, 20 feet up in that tree above deadly flood waters, Sofia birthed her baby all alone -- successfully -- and held on to her in the branches until a rescue helicopter spotted them.

While it's miraculous that Sofia and the baby both survived, we have a thousand logistical questions we want to ask her. For starters, the narrow limbs of trees aren't exactly conducive places to squeezing out a newborn ... so how did a normal, two-handed woman keep the baby from falling while hanging from a tree? When the first rescue worker reached her and discovered that she was holding a baby attached to a dangling placenta, how did he keep from screaming? Is that the only story Sofia Pedro's friends will hear at every party for the rest of their lives?