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Oklahoma miracle baby -- born amidst tornado chaos

Shayla Taylor was in labor when the devastating Moore, Oklahoma tornado hit. She had to moved to the operating room where there were no windows and braced herself along with the others. CBS News

(CBS News), NORMAN, Okla. -- There is more than enough stress, more than enough drama, when a mother-to-be is about to give birth under normal circumstances. But add a tornado, and the medical team really had to deliver.

"I was five centimeters already and having contractions," recalled Shayla Taylor.

Taylor was in labor on the second floor of the Moore Medical Center. She wasn't worried about a tornado until the nurses charged in.

"I was kind of just like, 'Oh crap,'" Taylor said about what she thought at the time. "I pull out my phone and pull up the weather app. It says it's coming down 4th Street in Moore, which is the street that the hospital is on."

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Shayla Taylor gave birth to a baby boy named Braeden Immanuel, which means "God is with us." CBS News

Her husband, Jerome, and their 4-year-old son, Shaiden, were sent downstairs. Nurses rushed Taylor to a place without windows -- the operating room.

"They went and took towels out the warmer and stacked them up on top of me. They hunkered down around my bed. I found the nearest hand to me and I grabbed it and we were all just in there praying. And I turned my head sideways and closed my eyes."

The next things she saw were I-35 and the Warren Theater. "There was no wall there anymore."

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Map showing path of tornado in Moore County Oklahoma undefined

Taylor said she was checking to see if the nurses were still in the room with her. "I was afraid one of them may have been sucked out.

A group of strangers helped Jerome get his wife to an ambulance. She delivered a son at a hospital a few miles away. She named her son Braeden Immanuel. " And 'Immanuel' means, "God is with us." I had it picked out for months. And now I know why I, because God was with us that day.

The Taylors are home now, counting their blessings.


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