New York City Pregnant Woman Has Her Baby In Uptown Crosswalk
New York City can be a tough place to grow up, but one city kid got a quick education in how to handle the New York streets — because she was born on one.
The craziness began around 3:30 Monday afternoon on New York’s Upper East Side. A pregnant woman, whose name has not been made public, went into labor and left her apartment building looking for a cab to get her to a hospital in a hurry.
But, look, if you’re ever lived in New York City, you know what’s like trying to hail a cab in the middle of the day. As her doorman walked her to the corner of 3rd Avenue and 68th Street, to hail her a taxi — the baby decided that hanging around hoping one would actually stop was pointless.
Delivery time was right then and there.
“She was like, ‘Oh, my God, the baby’s coming,'” said a passer-by who watched the remarkable New York scene unfold right there in the crosswalk. “And then I could see the baby’s head coming out.”
Just walked by 68th and SOMEONE JUST GAVE BIRTH IN THE STREET. YASS. pic.twitter.com/mG6tB3X2US
— Matt Carroll (@mattcguard) February 24, 2014
A news crew from a local New York City TV station just happened to be passing by in a van at the exact moment the woman got herself down on the pavement and started delivering the baby girl. So the hardened residents of New York City, who would likely tell you that they’ve seen it all, maybe now really have. They got to watch a live birth broadcast on their TV screen as it happened.
And who says people who live in New York City are indifferent to their fellow New Yorkers? Several passing pedestrians stopped and helped the woman through her delivery. The doorman assisted as well. The father of the child finally found his way to the scene, to see the couple’s third child come into the world under rather bizarre circumstances.
That baby must be one tough little customer, too. Not only did she greet the world in the crosswalk of a New York City street, the high temperature in Manhattan Monday was all of 37 degrees Fahrenheit.
Some of the women who has stopped to help with the unexpected birth wrapped the newborn in their scarves to keep the newest New York City native warm. The mother and child were taken by ambulance to New York City’s Lenox Hill Hospital to recover from the ordeal.
Unexpected births are highly unusual in the United States. According to the most recently available data, in the year 2011 there were 3.9 million babies born in the U.S. — New York City and everywhere else. Only 2,600 were born somewhere other than a hospital, a home or a birthing center.
