A New York City mom was on the verge of giving birth in a darkened hospital when hurricane Sandy struck, forcing doctors to give her an epidural by flashlight before she was taken to another hospital in an ambulance that was struck by a tree branch.

Julia Alemany, 34, a researcher, and her husband Doron Markus, 41, a school principal, were at New York University Langone Medical Center around 9 p.m. Monday when the hospital's lights went out as the massive storm hammered the city.

Staff told the couple they had to go to another hospital because the backup generators were under water and the building was no longer safe. Before they left, Alemany begged for some pain relief, so an anesthesiologist gave her an epidural in her spine with just a flashlight and the light of a few cellphones, the New York Daily News reported.

A team of doctors with headlamps took her in a sled down eight flights of stairs. More than 200 other patients were transferred from the hospital.

If that wasn't nail-biting enough, the ambulance Alemany and her husband were travelling in was struck by a tree branch, the Daily News reported. They made it safely to Mount Sinai hospital and just forty minutes later, at 12:48 a.m., Micah Alemany-Markus was born without complications.

"I never thought his birth would be anything like this. It was the most intense experience of my life," Alemany told the Daily News