Angel Grad Student Delivers Woman's Baby at Bus Stop


They say that every woman's birth story is unique, but having a baby at a bus stop, assisted only by a grad student in English Literature with a cellphone and a shoelace is more unusual than most.

Student Emily Brewer, 36, was heading for her bus stop at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on Wednesday, with her almost three-year-old son, Dylan, when a woman she didn't know approached her and asked for her help. Brewer followed her into the bus shelter to find the woman's friend, in a squat position, heavily pregnant and in distress.

"It appeared to me that her water was breaking," Brewer told Yahoo! Shine.

Brewer had no medical background-"I am a doctoral student at UNC in 18th and 19th Century British Literature," she said, "however I am a mom and I've been through labor. I'm glad it was me. If an undergrad had been called to help, it would have been pretty scary."



Brewer sat both her son and the friend's child on the bus bench and called 911. The dispatcher instructed her to find out how many weeks along the pregnant woman was. However the woman, later identified as Aguilar Lopez, spoke no English. Brewer speaks no Spanish, but posed the question in Italian. "She said, 'Trente-ocho'," Brewer said, "and while she said that, the baby just falls. There was no crying, no yelling, no contractions. So I say to the dispatcher, 'Oh my God, the baby's here'."

While the friend held up Lopez's pants (with the baby still in them), Brewer, following instructions from the dispatcher, used a shoelace to tile the umbilical cord and a scarf to clean out the baby's nose and mouth.



"It was a chilly day, but not cold," Brewer says, "and thankfully it was not rainy. Also it happened in the 10 minutes before classes got out, so there weren't too many people around. This was such a wonderful story. There were no complications. And within a minute of my tying the umbilical cord, the paramedics arrived."

Later than night, Brewer, with Dylan and her husband, went to visit Lopez at the UNC Women's Hospital. "The nurse went and asked the mom if we could visit," she says, "and described who I am, and apparently her face just lit up." Lopez told Brewer that she had named her little girl after her.

"I can't tell you what an honor that is," Brewer says. "I didn't do anything that any other mom wouldn't have done."