‘We just want to go home’: Australian couple stuck in US after unexpectedly becoming parents in a hurricane

An Australian couple on a dream holiday in the United States say bureaucracy has left them trapped after giving birth during a once-in-a-century storm.

Dayna and Tony, both 26 from New South Wales, were midway through their six-week trip when they unexpectedly became parents.

The couple had spent last Wednesday at Universal Studios before they were sent home, as the park closed ahead of Hurricane Milton’s arrival.

They returned to their hotel while others bunkered down, before shooting pain woke Dayna up.

She went to the bathroom while Tony slept and, after a while, gave birth to a baby girl.

“I started feeling really unwell, and it turned to pain up and down my leg,” she told 7NEWS.

“The power had gone out so I went to the bathroom and I was just in all this pain.”

It wasn’t until the pain worsened and she suddenly heard crying that Dayna began to process what was happening.

“Because I didn’t really look like I was pregnant, I was bloated and sore, but I’m also looking and going what is all this ... and I just hear crying.”

Paramedics and emergency services transported the mum to hospital where she and the newborn were taken care of - but Tony acknowledges it could have gone wrong.

“We’ve caught multiple planes, been doing 12-hour days at Disneyland and Universal Studios, not even knowing she was pregnant.”

Dayna said that she was “in shock” while she was being taken to hospital.

“I just screamed for my father because I was like what’s going on.

“It took me a while to process what’s actually happened, because it was the last thing I expected - to be pregnant and in a hurricane, and I had no symptoms really, at all.”

Their daughter Audrey was delivered healthy and happy, but the family now faces a new hurdle.

Because the little girl was born in the United States, she has a US birth certificate and would need to apply for Australian citizenship.

Travel insurance will cover the family’s medical bills - but Dayna and Tony have been told it could be months before their application is approved.

“The American doctors, they said she can apply for dual citizenship, and we said great, we’re Australian so we can just hop back on the plane with our baby and she can be American.,” she said.

“But we didn’t realise that that’s not how it works. So, just because we’re Australian doesn’t mean that our baby is. My poor dad’s been looking up all this stuff, trying to contact the Australian government and all these agencies and we’ve got no clue what to do.”

The couple have a hotel room booked for the next 10 days.

From then, they’re not sure where to go or what to do.

“We’ve got 10 days left of hotel reservations ... and they said to just apply for citizenship and we’ll get back to you within seven months. What are we gonna do for seven months?”

Tony said they were told that applications are considered on a “case-by-case basis” and it was a requirement to tell them of the worst-case scenario.

But even knowing that, he said, was daunting.

“We just want to go home,” Dayna said.

Audrey arrived about 15 hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida and left a path of destruction, including leaving millions without power.

Orlando avoided the worst of the storm.