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.
“On top of that, the unexpected circumstances have created a heavy financial burden: NICU care (with no release date yet), medical bills, and travel and lodging expenses while they are far from home,” she said.
Surprise deliveries are uncommon but far from unheard of, experts say. About 1 in every 500 pregnant women discovers she’s expecting more than 20 weeks along — a phenomenon known as “cryptic pregnancy.”
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 the Burner mother, a subset of such parents only discovers they’re pregnant when they go into labor.
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.
Still, births are all but unheard at the celebration of “community, art, self-expression and self-reliance.”
The surprise delivery occurred just hours after a white-out dust storm ground incoming traffic to a halt as festivalgoers streamed in and attempted to set camp on Monday.
The dramatic weather recalled torrential rains that flooded the camp in 2023, leaving thousands stranded in deep, sticky mud.
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