After decades of debauchery and an untold number of conceptions, revelers at Burning Man celebrated a rare birth at Black Rock City on Wednesday morning, after a festivalgoer unexpectedly went into labor on the Playa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an absolute miracle<\/a>,\u201d said new father Kasey, 39, of Salt Lake City, who asked that only the family\u2019s first names be used to protect their privacy. \u201cHad I known [about the pregnancy], that\u2019s the absolutely last place on this planet I would have been.\u201d <\/p>\n His wife, Kayla, 36, had no symptoms and wasn\u2019t showing when she suddenly went into labor in their RV just before dawn, the new father said. Doctors believe baby Aurora was about a month shy of her due date when she arrived minutes later, weighing a little over 3\u00bd pounds. <\/p>\n \u201cI just started yelling for anyone to come help me,\u201d Kasey recalled through tears. \u201cIn a matter of minutes we had an [obstetrician], a NICU nurse, a pediatrician in there \u2014 I don\u2019t know where they all came from, they just came.\u201d <\/p>\n As luck would have it, a dream team of medical professionals had pitched their camp just next door. The obstetrician was still in his underwear as he and the ersatz labor and delivery crew scrambled to tend to the newborn and her mother, scrounging for clean blankets, saline and other emergency medical supplies in the dusty and mud-caked camp. <\/p>\n The family was transported to the festival\u2019s official medical tent, where mom Kayla held her tiny naked daughter to her bare chest while they waited for a helicopter to take her to a neonatal intensive care unit in Reno. They made the wrenching decision to send Aurora alone after learning there wasn\u2019t space for either parent to travel with her. <\/p>\n \u201cThe medical staff at Burning Man grabbed me and just hugged me and said he\u2019s not going to let her out of her sight,\u201d Kasey said. \u201cHe kept reassuring me she\u2019s going to be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n But the family\u2019s odyssey was just beginning. The drive to Reno took hours. Kayla was treated and released from the hospital on Thursday. But baby Aurora remains in the NICU and could face an extended stay, family said. <\/p>\n \u201cSince this is their first child and the pregnancy was completely unexpected, my brother and his wife don\u2019t have anything prepared \u2014 no baby supplies, no nursery, nothing at all,\u201d the infant\u2019s aunt Lacey Paxman wrote in a GoFundMe appeal<\/a> for the family. <\/p>\n \u201cMost people get nine months to prepare,\u201d she said. \u201cThey became parents in a blink of an eye.\u201d <\/p>\n For now, the family is stranded in Reno, though they hope to get baby Aurora transported to a hospital closer to home. <\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s just going to light up my sky,\u201d Kasey said of the fragile newborn, whom he held for the first time on Friday. \u201cShe\u2019s going to be my everything.\u201d <\/p>\n Surprise deliveries are uncommon but far from unheard of, experts say. About 1 in every 500 pregnant women discovers she\u2019s expecting more than 20 weeks along \u2014 a phenomenon known as \u201ccryptic pregnancy.\u201d <\/p>\n Cryptic pregnancies are more common among very young mothers, as well as those who may have other health conditions that mask pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, exhaustion and even missed periods. Like Kayla, a subset of such parents only discover they\u2019re pregnant when they go into labor. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was absolutely 100% a cryptic pregnancy,\u201d Kasey said. \u201cNo signs, no morning sickness. She wasn\u2019t even showing.\u201d <\/p>\n Pregnant women, young children and even babies are a regular feature of the nine-day Burning Man festival, which draws tens of thousands of people each year to a desolate strip of the Nevada desert about 120 miles north of Reno.<\/p>\n Still, births are all but unheard at the celebration of \u201ccommunity, art, self-expression and self-reliance.\u201d Some longtime Burners have dubbed Aurora \u201cCitizen Zero.\u201d<\/p>\n Her unexpected arrival occurred just hours after a white-out dust storm<\/a> brought incoming traffic to a halt as festivalgoers streamed in and attempted to set camp on Monday. <\/p>\n