MELBOURNE – New Zealand Member of Parliament Julie Anne Genter got on her bicycle early on Sunday and headed to the hospital. She w as already in labor and she gave birth an hour later.
“Big news!” the Greens politician posted on her Facebook page a few hours later. “At 3.04am this morning we welcomed the newest member of our family. I genuinely wasn’t planning to cycle in labor, but it did end up happening.”
The island nation of 5 million already has a reputation for down-to-earth politicians. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern famously took maternity leave while in office and brought her three-month old to a United Nations meeting as she was still breastfeeding.
“My contractions weren’t that bad when we left at 2am to go to the hospital – though they were 2-3 min apart and picking up in intensity by the time we arrived 10 minutes later,” Genter wrote.
“Amazingly now we have a healthy, happy little one sleeping, as is her dad,” said Genter, a dual New Zealand-U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and moved to the Pacific country in 2006.
Genter – her party’s spokesperson for transport issues and whose Facebook profile includes “I love my bicycle” – also biked to the hospital in 2018 to give birth to her first-born, local media said.