When Chris Jeng realised his girlfriend was not going to make it to hospital in time to give birth, he prayed for divine intervention.

He was driving along Cemetery Road, Bradford, in their Ford Focus in a mad dash to Bradford Royal Infirmary with 30-year-old Natalie Maddison, in agony on the back seat after going into labour at home at 38 weeks pregnant.

Chris knew he had to act quickly when she began screaming ‘it’s coming’.

“I was panicking and remember thinking ‘please God help us’,” said Chris, 32.

“At that moment, as I looked forward there was an ambulance coming over the brow of the hill towards us.

“It was amazing, the timing. I swerved into their lane, I was flashing my lights and peeping the horn. I was so pleased to see them and I thought it was a miracle – literally.”

Paramedic Karen Towers and emergency medical technician Sara Brooke later told the couple they often get people pulling them over for silly reasons, but seeing the panic in his eyes had convinced them something was wrong. Luckily, they were on a break and able to stop.

Chris said: “I jumped out of the car, opened the back door and saw the baby’s head coming out. Karen Towers pushed me out of the way and she delivered the baby.

“They were so calm and cut the cord in the car and tended to Natalie.

“She then went off in the ambulance and I just sat in the car, crying and laughing – I couldn’t believe what had happened.”

The baby boy, born at 2.25pm on Friday, weighed 6lb 7oz and has been named Leo David Jeng.

He is a brother for Natalie’s two daughters – ten-year-old Imaan and nine-year-old Alliyya – and Chris’s 13-year-old daughter Liyah.

The couple, of Belmont Avenue, Low Moor, Bradford, praised the paramedics as “true heroes” for their actions.

Natalie, who had not only been to a parents’ consultation at school that afternoon but also shopping in Morrisons an hour earlier, said: “Without them, I don’t know what I would have done.

“It could have been a different story.”