They're going to have to start calling it The GDE Club - two babies born near the same Gungahlin Drive Extension off-ramp virtually a year apart.
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Chelsea Bree Hayes was born at 12.40pm on Thursday while her parents were stuck on a red light at the GDE off-ramp to Belconnen Way en route to Calvary Hospital.
Mum Erin was in the back seat on her knees looking over to the boot while her husband, Gavin, was driving. In the end, it took just two pushes and Chelsea was born.
''I had my tracky daks down to my knees and I'd been mooning who knows how many people on the way,'' Mrs Hayes said.
Almost a year earlier, on August 12, 2011, Audrey Claire Freebairn was born on nearby Haydon Drive, also en route to Calvary Hospital after going down the same off-ramp. Her mother, Sarah Yap, gave birth at 8.20am in the front passenger seat as her mother drove and her then two-year-old son Shaun was strapped in the back seat. The family had been stuck in morning peak-hour traffic on the GDE before finally getting to the off-ramp.
The mothers joke they are now part of a special club.
''Not that I'd recommend it to anyone,'' Mrs Hayes, 28, said. ''But what a club to be part of.''
Luckily, both stories had a happy outcome, but the issue has received serious consideration in the past with a Liberal Party-chaired Assembly committee in 2001 advising the government to build an emergency access road from the GDE to Calvary Hospital.
The mothers, meanwhile, shared their war stories yesterday as Mrs Hayes recovered at home in Franklin, electing to leave hospital after just one night and go home to be with Gavin and their 20-month-old toddler Madison.
Mrs Hayes said she felt her first contraction at home at 11.30am on Thursday, one day after Chelsea's due date.
She called her husband at 11.50am to come home from work at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship in Belconnen. She also had to wait for her mother to arrive to look after Madison.
By the time the couple were on the GDE, the baby was well and truly on her way.
''We were on the GDE and had just got to Canberra Stadium and I said, 'I have to push, I have to push' and my husband was like, 'Yeah, don't push','' Mrs Hayes said.
''Just after the stadium, the head came out and I said, 'I've got the head'.''
His thoughts? ''This can't be good,'' Mr Hayes said.
They got a red light on the off-ramp and Mrs Hayes gave a second push and ''she was out''.
She held the baby in her knees, cradling it in her tracksuit pants because she didn't want to rupture the umbilical cord.
When they got to Calvary Hospital, an ambulance had just arrived and Mr Hayes, 28, quickly told the paramedics what had happened, the officers jumping to action to help mum and bub.
It was all bringing back some familiar memories for Mrs Yap, of Harrison. Her husband, Will Freebairn, was at work when her contractions started, she and her mother leaving the family home just 25 minutes before Audrey was born and facing some fearful moments as they were stuck in traffic on the GDE.
It was also her second child, son Shaun is now three. ''The stories are almost identical,'' Ms Yap, 34, said.
Both agreed they would camp out at hospital a week before the due date if they went for baby No.3. But, importantly, Mrs Hayes was glad to hear Ms Yap kept her car. ''We'll probably just go and get it a bit detailed,'' she said.
