Place of birth = At Sea

Wow just been reading about a baby being born on the ‘Independence of the Seas’ whilst at sea !!

beautiful pregnant woman on a beach

A fellow passenger said that they were made aware of a medical emergency whilst onboard the Independence of the seas last week. The ship headed full speed to San Juan as a woman gave birth to a little boy in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The informant said the lady was at dinner on the Monday night and wondered how she had been allowed on the ship so far gone and low and behold 8 hours later the baby was delivered.Mother and baby were taken off the ship in San Juan ahead of schedule by an Ambulance. The captain said that mother and baby were both fine and that on the baby’s birth certificate it had place of birth – ‘ at sea ‘

This also happened on a cruise that I was on in the Canaries a couple of years ago. The captain came on the tannoy to say we had a medical emergency on board and was doing a detour back to Las Palmas the captain wasn’t as open though with the information though so to this day we don’t know if the baby was born at sea or not.
There are policies in place when it comes to when a pregnant woman is no longer welcome on a cruise ship. Most cruise lines have a 24 weeks rule which is somewhat earlier than the airlines. Im not 100 % why this is could be a number of reasons I have heard that the motion of cruising is supposed to bring on labour but I suppose once the cruise is at sea and hundreds of miles away from land would the coast guard come to the rescue ?

It’s hard reconciling the story but I suppose not everyone reads the small print and a lot of people book so far in advance they may not think it is an issue !!