UPDATE: The baby girl born at Z Energy petrol station this morning has already been nicknamed 'Z', her parents have said in a statement.
Jacob Scott-Simmonds, 34, and his wife Miranda Scott-Simmonds, 35, from Mt Maunganui say they have been overwhelmed by the amount of attention the birth of their daughter, at the Z Service Station in Hewletts Road Mt Maunganui this morning, had created.
Mr Scott-Simmonds said the morning was "pretty manic".
"Miranda had the first contraction at 6.45am and then another one pretty close after that so I was thinking, hang on maybe I should be timing these and maybe we should start packing some stuff. We had nothing packed," he said.
"I basically went shotgun approach and threw a couple of bags of stuff together for Miranda and the baby. Then, after Miranda had stopped swearing, we rang our midwife Gillian at about 7.30am.
"At the time we still didn't want to be 'the panic people' you know who call too early but the timing between contractions had got to three minutes so we thought we would.
"By the time we were backing out of the garage she was saying she wanted to push and I was telling her not to. You really couldn't print what her response was to that bit of advice. It wasn't friendly.
"We only made it to the letterbox and Miranda was trying to push again. She's telling me not to drive crazy but at that time of the morning it's rush hour and I pretty much just had to reverse out into the traffic. I got abused for that of course.
"We got to the KFC roundabout and it was obvious we weren't really going to make it. So I called Gillian again and we had her on speakerphone in the car. I think my comment to her was 'This s*** just got real.'
"Gillian advised us to pull over and she would call an ambulance for us, so we pulled over into the 'Z' service station (on Hewletts Road) just after the roundabout.
"It felt like an age for the ambulance to get there but in reality was only a few minutes. By this stage Miranda was crowning so the ambos arrived in the nick of time. We rolled her out of the car onto the stretcher and five minutes later in the ambulance the baby arrived.
"I didn't have a clue what was going on to be honest. I was in the back of the ambulance thinking 'Holy, this was not the birth plan'.
"The ambos were absolutely awesome though; they were really relaxed, professional and did their thing which is what we needed to calm us down a bit. I was able to cut the cord as well.
"Then Kelly (the couple's back-up midwife who was called because their LMC - lead maternity carer - Gillian was awaiting the couple's arrival at Tauranga Hospital) arrived on her scooter. She checked us over and saw that everything was ok before we headed off to hospital.
"We can't thank Gillian, Kelly, the ambos, and the hospital staff enough, everyone's been great.
"We haven't named our new daughter yet but she's already been nicknamed 'Z'. A couple of my friends have asked me whether we got free pies at the service station."
EARLIER: A baby has been born safe and well on the forecourt of a Mount Maunganui petrol station this morning.
