Pregnant Woman Was Stranded on Mountain the Night Before Her C-Section, Then Everyone Rushed to Help

North Carolina mom Courtney Mosser had to face the aftermath of Hurricane Helene before giving birth

• Courtney Mosser was 40 weeks pregnant when a hurricane barreled over her community outside Asheville, N.C., just before she planned to deliver her baby, who was breech
• She was unsure how she could get to the hospital, so her neighbors started reaching out and eventually her plight made it to social media and was spotted by emergency officials
• “I’m thankful for her courage,” says the doctor, CJ Atkinson, who came to her aid

Courtney Mosser spent two weeks nervously getting ready for a scheduled cesarean section after learning her fetus was breech, or feet-first in her uterus.

But the night before Mosser’s planned surgery in late September, Hurricane Helene came roaring through North Carolina — and right over her community just outside Asheville — washing out roads and trapping the 38-year-old, who was 40 weeks pregnant, in the Black Mountains along with her husband, Justin, and their 3-year-old son, Dylan.

Mosser, who works as a dietitian, remembers now how “that night, I was starting to get a little nervous, but I didn’t think it was going to be anything more than a bunch of rain.”

“I thought it might be inconvenient but it wouldn’t prevent the surgery from happening,” she tells PEOPLE. 

Instead, in the wake of the devastating storm, she and her husband were left without power while “trying to figure out a plan.”

Justin, a data engineer, tried to drive into town to get cell service to call the hospital — and that’s when he learned just how bad things were. 

“He got to a point where there was a river running through the road and then there was a sinkhole and landslides up and down the highway we take to get out of our neighborhood,” Mosser says.

Their neighbors started coming together and realized none of them had power or phone service either; and only one house had internet and another had a satellite phone.

They were stuck. And Mosser still needed her C-section.

“We had tried calling 911 but it wasn’t working on our phones so neighbors were contacting people about me and someone posted it on social media,” Mosser says.

Emergency services officials in Asheville saw the post and sprang into action, sending out a doctor and a paramedic with the state highway patrol.

CJ Atkinson was the doctor dispatched to go find Mosser.

“I left in a state trooper’s car and that’s when I learned she was breech and due for a C-section, and that changes everything,” Atkinson says. “Without proper care, even in a controlled setting, that can be a setup for a very poor outcome.”

Atkinson is a physician for Novant Health in Charlotte, about two hours from Asheville, but because he’d previously been a doctor in the Army, he’d come into town to help after getting an urgent request from the county.

He was initially told Mosser was in active labor and was preparing for the worst-case scenario: “We had to prepare to likely code or resuscitate a baby and get those supplies together and set up for all the complications that could come for mom when delivering a breech baby.”

After a treacherous drive through badly damaged roads — only accessible by first responders — Atkinson and his team reached Mosser in a neighbor’s house in the mountains, where she was doing her best to stay calm.

“I told her, ‘I have a helicopter here, we need to get you off the mountain,” Atkinson says. But Mosser “wanted them to come. She just lost it crying when I told her they couldn’t but we had to get her off the mountain.”

After a final embrace with her husband and son, Mosser finally agreed to get on the helicopter. 

From above, she took in what Helene had left behind.

“At first I was looking out at the beautiful mountains and then I looked down and I saw the flipped cars and the piles of mud and places where there should be houses and there were no houses — and then I realized there was complete devastation,” Mosser says.

“In all of that, Dr Atkinson had come to get me and that felt overwhelming,” she says.

The helicopter first took them into Asheville, where Mosser had been scheduled to deliver, but they learned the facility was running on a generator and running low on water and sterile supplies. So they made the decision to head to Atkinson’s hospital in Charlotte.

Meanwhile, back in Mosser’s neighborhood, community members were working to fill in the road just enough so that her husband and son could safely get down off the mountain to be with her. 

Incredibly, they managed to make it to Charlotte, where Mosser gave birth to little Maya.

“When I saw her it was an amazing feeling and she cried immediately and I knew she was healthy,” Mosser says, “and that was just overwhelming relief.”

Once mom and baby were released from the hospital, they faced another ordeal: The roads were still too dangerous for them to feel comfortable heading back home, where they were also concerned about how their roof had fared in the hurricane.

So a friend connected with other moms through Facebook and, in a matter of hours, Mosser and her family had a temporary home.

“People I’ve never met and never will, they had filled this house with furniture and there was a meal train for me, clothes for all of us, even a Halloween costume for Maya,” Mosser says. “Anything and everything we needed just appeared — just because. They just did it because I was another mom who needed help.”

Dr. Atkinson also made a house call.

“There was so much devastation and the loss of life so to have a good outcome – they look like such a beautiful young family — I needed that for me, too,” he says. “I’m thankful for her courage.”

Mosser says she can’t wait to tell her daughter how she came into the world.

“She was born breech during a hurricane on an eclipse [on Oct. 2], so I think she’s a pretty powerful being,” she says of Maya, “and I’m gonna tell her there’s nothing she can’t accomplish and show her how many people already care about her. I think I’ll make sure to tell her that, too.”

This article was originally published by People