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.
Some longtime Burners have dubbed the infant “Citizen Zero.”
“Baby girl arrived weighing 3 lbs 9.6 oz and measuring 16.5 inches long,” the infant’s aunt Lacey Paxman wrote in a GoFundMe appeal for the family. “She is currently in the NICU, gaining strength every day. Mom and baby are both doing OK, but she will need to stay in the hospital until she is ready to come home.”
Family members said the woman did not know she was pregnant until she felt the baby coming early Wednesday morning. According to one Redditor, an obstetrician and a pediatric trauma nurse were both camped nearby and rushed to aid the delivery when she went into labor.
The parents then drove themselves to the campground’s medical facility before being airlifted to a major hospital where the baby could receive specialized intensive care, the Redditor said.
“Since this is their first child and the pregnancy was completely unexpected, my brother and his wife don’t have anything prepared — no baby supplies, no nursery, nothing at all,” Paxman wrote.
