At around 10pm one night I realized I’d forgotten to walk the dog and should probably do so before going to bed. As I step out onto the street I notice a woman leaning against a car with a weird look on her face, like a grimace. It’s a big city and I’ve seen lots of weird people around here so I don’t think much of it and start walking away when I hear her whimper. I turn around and ask her if she’s ok and she assures me she’s fine, her “husband is coming”. At this point I notice she’s heavily pregnant and there’s also a toddler in her car, but she insists she’s fine so I start walking away again.

I get 20 or 30 paces down the street and the woman lets out this blood-curdling howl. I run back to her and ask her what’s going on and she just says “I need to sit down”. I lead her to the steps outside my apartment building where she sits down and I fetch her a glass of water and put the dog back inside. I’ll always regret not inviting her in to my place for what comes next but I’ve been jaded by so many con-artists and burglars trying to get into my building that I didn’t feel like it was an option.

She starts breathing super heavily and stops responding to me completely. Like I’m not even there. I’m freaking out and her husband is nowhere in sight. I have no idea what to do so I rush into the hotel next door to find a “real adult” (I was early 20s) and come out with a few other 20-somethings that “knew first aid”. We immediately call an ambulance.

The ambulance guys tell me they’ll be here in 5mins but to go and get towels just in-case she’s about to give birth. I run in and get all my towels. As I come out the woman gets off the step and kneels on all fours in the middle of the sidewalk. I place towels all around her on the floor and she screams in pain. By this point a small crowd has gathered to see what all the fuss is about and some dude tries to convince her to get on her back and starts pulling her around. She fucking screams at him to stop and he backs off. She then drops her leggings down to her knees and screams “CATCH THE BABY” at which point me and one of the guys from the hotel reach down and see a newborn baby dangling in her leggings. Ambulance guys are still on the phone and tell us to wrap the baby in clean towels and, I kid you not, not even 30 seconds later the ambulance and husband both arrive.

Apparently they had rented a place a few doors down from me for the birth but there was a problem with the keys or something. The husband thanks us and they all go into the ambulance. I’m in shock and the only thing I can think is that I need to clean all this blood and poop off the sidewalk so I clean it all off. The guys from the hotel crack open a bottle of wine and we all just stand around in shock at what just happened.

So that’s the story of how I delivered a baby on the street outside my apartment. I can’t watch any birth scenes on TV or movies anymore either because of what I think is probably mild PTSD and it makes me feel instantly sick to my stomach and panicked.

TLDR: delivered a stranger’s baby on the street outside my apartment with zero prior experience

I’m in the medical field, so there’s a lot of shit I’ve seen at the hospital, but I would say the real craziest thing I ever saw happened when I was in my early 20s. I moved back in with my parents for a time after I had to give up my first apartment. My parents have always had a bit of an unhealthy relationship, they fight like it’s their job. My childhood bedroom is always next to the kitchen and front room where they would fight, so I heard a lot of it and sadly just got used to it after so many years, though listening to it constantly as a child formed some core memories in there somewhere.

When I was there in my 20s I would mostly hang out in the separate garage, it helps me to feel like I still kind of had my own space. I worked graves, and would maintain my schedule on my days off, playing video games through the night. One night my dad came out randomly and was in an absolute state, telling me my mom had said “maybe divorce” and a couple other things. We talked at length and I thought I had helped him calm down. He left and I was up for a few more hours. I passed him sleeping in his truck on my way into the house to go to bed, it was weird but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Just figured he needed to sleep it off. I had only been asleep a couple hours, when my mom came running, panic screaming into my room at the top of her lungs. She woke me up shaking and yelling that my dad was going to kill himself right now in the garage, that he had the gun and that he said he was going to shoot himself in the face if she tried to stop him. At that moment I saw him passing my room on his way outside. With only a couple hours of sleep ruining my capacity for reasoning my adrenaline went straight from 0 to full blast. I had discovered the nature of their disagreement the night before talking to my dad, so my mouth just ran away before I could think. I sprinted into the hall and caught him by the shoulder , then immediately started shouting all kinds of heinous shit at them about how they were both being “dumb fucks, stupid fucking idiots, immature as fuck” I don’t remember the exact words but you get the gist. These are two very religious people who never would have accepted hearing the slightest profanity out of me in regular circumstances, not even the word “god” or the word “hell” (mormons). So yeah, neither of them said anything they both just stood there crying or stunned and listened to me tell them what big fucking morons they were and how immature they were acting, this went on for at least 15 solid minutes, easily the most cathartic thing that has ever happened to me in my entire life, bar none. At the end they were both just kind of stunned, we had it pretty well resolved and they were both calm and I went back to sleep, a testament to just how tired I was in that moment. The three of us have never talked about it again, I think because it all just got resolved right there somehow. Nothing like it has ever happened with them again according to my sister who still lives with them