Connecticut mom gives birth at home — alone

It wasn't in her birth plan, but when Erica Bovino's water broke, she knew she had to make the best of the situation and just follow her instincts: give birth at home, alone.

Bovino, 34, went into labour at 1 a.m. on May 6 at her home in Southington, Conn. Her husband, police officer Paul Sulzicki, was on duty. Her three-year-old son, Jack, was asleep in the next room.

Because she endured a 30-hour labour with her first child, she assumed she had plenty of time before her second child would make an appearance.

She was wrong.

Around 5 a.m., she called her husband and told him not to rush home. Twenty minutes later, her water broke.

"There was no time to be scared," Bovino tells TODAY. "You get into a primal mode. If I had an ounce of fear, I wouldn't have been able to have a healthy outcome."

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Bovino went into the washroom and got ready to give birth.

"In that moment, I was like, this baby is coming and I'm going to have to deliver her myself," Bovino says.

"I remember saying, 'Come on, baby. Come on, baby,'" Bovino tells TODAY. "I was kind of trying to breathe her out and do deep moaning to get her out and not be fearful of the pain. I went inside myself."

"I squatted and, not even I would say, five minutes later she was born. I looked up and had her up like this and boom her eyes opened," Bovino tells NBC News.

Baby Stella was born as Bovino's husband made his way home.

"It was amazing to come home and see Erica holding a baby in her arms," Sulzicki says.

Sulzicki called 911 and the midwife upon arriving home. Bovino and Stella were taken to Yale-New Haven Hospital for observation.

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"Everyone at the hospital called her a super woman, a trooper," Paul tells NBC. "Just absolutely amazing what she did by herself."

While the birth wasn't without complications — the umbilical cord was severed during the delivery, resulting in significant blood loss — both mother and child are doing well and needed no special medical treatment following the at-home ordeal.

"I'm blessed that everything turned out the way it did, that she was healthy and I was healthy because, who knows, any number of things could go wrong in childbirth," Bovino says.

"Considering her grand entrance, she's really chill," Bovino tells the Record-Journal.

Bovino hopes her story inspires and reassures pregnant women "to trust themselves and trust their bodies. For thousands of years, women birthed naturally. Now women don’t trust themselves and they fear the unknown of it."

"Hopefully, it's an inspiration to other women to trust themselves," she adds. "I just wanted to be that voice for women."