My partner didn’t believe I was giving birth in the car until he saw our daughter’s feet

When mum-to-be Claire Furner's waters broke on 10 January – 17 days before her due date – she never dreamt she'd end up giving birth in the back of a car in a lay-by. Her partner Ian Moore, who works as a joiner, never expected to find himself acting as midwife that evening either.

The roads were icy and it was pitch black outside, as the couple were driven to hospital by Ian's Auntie Sue. It was a last-minute dash after Claire's waters had suddenly broken at home, while the couple were cleaning their house in Kirk Michael.

As the trio made their way to Noble's Hospital in the Isle of Man, Claire's contractions were getting stronger and stronger. "I said to Ian, 'I need to push, I need to push,'" says Claire, "Then I said, 'She's out!'

“I think he didn’t believe me really – the car was still being driven, we pulled into this lay-by and even when Ian ran around to the other side of the car, I still don’t think he quite believed me," she adds. "I said, 'You need to take my trousers off.' It was only when he took my trousers off, he saw these little legs dangling, and I thought, 'Oh God, she really is out.'"

Meanwhile, Ian was utterly baffled, as he watched their baby being born in the breech position – feet-first.

"I didn’t even register that it was the baby’s legs at first," he says."I just looked and thought, 'What an awful shade of purple' so then I was panicking. I thought, 'Hang on a minute, is it meant to be that shade of purple?' I’m a joiner, I know as much about midwifery as most midwives know about hanging a door.

"I sensed the panic, when Claire said, 'Oh, it's feet first, it's breech,' and then my Auntie Sue was panicking, and I just suddenly thought, 'I need to be calm, because no one else is going to be calm.'

"I took a breath and thought, 'Right, there's nothing we can do, we've just got to deal with what we've got.

"At this point, Sue was ringing 999 and an ambulance was on its way which was a big relief.

Only one in 200 babies in the UK are born breech – and mostly the expectant mother will be offered the chance at 36 weeks for an obstetrician to try to turn the baby into the usual, safer head-down position.

But while battling a temperature of just two degrees and struggling to see in the light of the car, Claire managed to give birth to Tamzin – their fourth child. Claire spread out on the back seats of the car, while a terrified Ian knelt in the footwell, doing his best to help her give birth, despite having no medical training.

Knowing how risky a breech birth can be, Claire tried to block out her fears.

"I thought to myself, 'You hear so many horror stories about breech, it can all go horrifically wrong,'"she says. "Thank goodness it didn't, but it could have been a completely different story. In those two minutes between contractions, it felt like forever because all these horrors were going through my head, worrying, 'She's going to get caught up, my body's not going to cope, she's going to get stuck, but weirdly it was actually quite a smooth ride.

"When the paramedic came there were three grown-ups in the back and I wasn’t sitting nice and neatly, I was sprawled everywhere," remembers Claire. “There were three grown adults in the back, plus a baby!"

Paramedics then took the couple and their newborn to hospital, where Tamzin was checked over.

Claire and Ian couldn't be prouder of their daughter. "She’s come into the world like a real trooper," smiles Claire. "It’s almost like Tamzin knew herself what she needed to do get out safely."

It's not uncommon for third and fourth babies to be born very quickly, according to the NHS, but remarkably, Tamzin appeared after only three pushes.

“The first push was the legs, which was when I was still fully clothed," says Claire, "and the second push she came out with one arm down. The third push was one arm up."

Sue Moore, 64, a retired post mistress, also played a crucial part. "The lady on 999 was saying we needed to get the baby to breathe, her heart was beating but we needed to get her to breathe and to cry," she says. "I was rubbing the baby's face and Ian was rubbing her little body and suddenly she cried. She was lying on Claire's stomach and luckily, by coincidence, we had some towels with us to cover her up with."

Around 0.5% of all UK births happen out of hospital unexpectedly, according to research by Health Innovation South West. These are known as Birth Before Arrivals (BBAs) and they are often associated with difficult outcomes, such as the baby suffering from hypothermia.

Thankfully, Tamzin was born healthy and will always have a special reminder of her unusual birth as her parents gave her the middle name ‘Greeba’, named after the area they had to pull into for her to be born.

"I'm so proud of them," says Sue. "Claire was an absolute star, and both her and Ian were so brave."

Read more about surprising births:

• I gave birth to three supersized babies, one weighed more than a 10-person Christmas turkey (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)

• Mum gives birth naturally to one of the UK's biggest babies weighing almost 13lbs (Yahoo Life UK, 3-min read)

• I gave birth whilst in a coma after suffering with pregnancy (Lancs Live, 4-min read)