As her husband swerved the car over patches of ice toward an Ajax hospital, Paula Mbonda sat in the back seat brainstorming names for her new baby.

“I was thinking of funny different names for the kid,” said Mbonda. “Should we name the baby Storm? Ice?”

She had awoken around 3:15 a.m. Sunday with painful contractions. Outside her Pickering home the roads were slick with ice and rolling blackouts cut power across town.

But the scariest part had yet to come.

After de-icing the car, the couple called their midwife. She had bad news. The nearest hospital had been hit by the blackout.

If she wanted to give birth in hospital she would have to do it by flashlight.

The news came as a shock to the father, who is originally from Cameroon.

“It never occurred to me that a hospital in Canada, in the first world, would be without power,” said father Al Mbonda. “It never occurred to me that I’d be in a birthing centre with no generator.”

As the contractions came harder and faster, the couple was forced to make a quick decision. Should they stay home with the mid-wife or risk the icy roads for a hospital birth?

“It thought we should just try Ajax,” said the father, who remembered how doctors had saved his son after a harrowing birth eight years earlier. “I was very scared of having a home delivery.”

He drove through the slick streets while the mother sat in the back seat. After half an hour — which felt like two hours, the father said — they made it to the Rouge Valley Ajax and Pickering hospital.

Once inside, the couple could barely see. Nurses carrying flashlights led the mother through the blackness to a little birthing room. Aside from a small battery-powered light in the corner, everything was dark.

But the mother says she wasn’t scared.

“That might seem a little confusing, but I did feel like I was in good hands just because I had made it, and they did have flashlights,” she said.

Once the midwife arrived, everything happened within minutes. The baby boy came out healthy at just over eight pounds at 4:40 a.m.

“His face is a little bruised from a fast delivery, but otherwise OK,” the mother said.

The whole ordeal, from waking up, the icy drive to delivery, took just over one hour. Despite the frenzy, Mbonda said she was only ever nervous during the icy drive.

“I was scared I was going to have the baby in the car. But my husband drove safe, he did everything right, he was calm, the midwife was calm. So I had to be calm too.”

A hospital spokesman said the medical staff pulled together to make the hectic birth as smooth as possible.

“The mom had a great delivery with physicians who were providing great service on a challenging day,” said David Brazeau of Rouge Valley Health System.

While the couple has gone back and forth on ice-related names, they decided to stick with calling their newborn Pearson after the mother’s favourite place.

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“Before I turned 30 I travelled to 30 countries and my favourite place in the world was Pearson Airport,” Paula Mbonda said

The mother, who remains in hospital, said the hectic delivery will be a story to tell for birthdays to come.

“I think it would’ve been boring to have him any other way,” she said.