It was a perfectly normal delivery in the most abnormal place possible: bumper-to-bumper traffic in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.<\/p>\n
When Karollyn Zepeda realized Saturday afternoon that it was time to head to the hospital to deliver her child, she and her partner Nate Geminiano didn’t expect traffic to derail their birth plan.<\/p>\n
“I had looked at Nate and I was like, ‘You know what, I’m scared I’m gonna have this baby right here,’ especially because just as we were leaving my house my water did break,” Zepeda said.<\/p>\n
With traffic on Crossover Drive through Golden Gate Park at a standstill, Geminiano pulled over, called 911 and started asking other people stuck in traffic for help.<\/p>\n
“I told them that she was in labor,” Geminiano said. “Then they assisted me in just going around to other cars trying to find any medical professionals.”<\/p>\n
Katie Higgins, a trained doula, was sitting in traffic several cars away when she heard those calls for help. She jumped into action, along with other helpers.<\/p>\n
“Someone was going through their car and ultimately found a box of gloves that were very important and helpful,” Higgins said. “A couple women showed up with a big blanket to give her privacy. Everybody, all these San Franciscans came together.”<\/p>\n
Zepeda said she felt relief as soon as Higgins showed up.<\/p>\n
“She immediately, I think, said to me, ‘I’ve done two home births. I’m a doula.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’ I was just immediately relived,” Zepeda said.<\/p>\n
The gridlock also delayed first responders. Both the American Medical Response (AMR) ambulance crew and the San Francisco firefighter team that were dispatched to the scene realized they were not going to be able to make it to the call in their vehicles, so they had to hike.<\/p>\n
Brian Ingram with AMR tried pushing a gurney through traffic before settling on another plan.<\/p>\n
“I asked one of the firefighters, ‘I just need one person. Just grab the front. We just got to try to make it up this dirt hill,'” he said.<\/p>\n
When first responders eventually arrived, they all pitched in to help. A few pushes later, a new child was born.<\/p>\n
“Being able to grab that baby, I wrapped her up in a blanket and turned around and handed her to dad,” firefighter William Melton said. “It was a very special moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a perfectly normal delivery in the most abnormal place possible: bumper-to-bumper traffic in San Francisco’s Golden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-473350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}