A Brooklyn bus driver became a mobile midwife on Friday as he helped deliver a bouncing baby girl in the middle of his route.
Christopher Accettulli, a 20-year MTA veteran, was driving the B37 bus down Third Avenue at about 10 a.m. on Jan. 23 when he heard a passenger say “hospital,” and looked back to see a woman standing at the back of the bus.
He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on – until he heard her say “baby.”
When he pulled into a bus stop on 8th Street in Gowanus, two other passengers walked off and warned “I think she’s giving birth,” Accettulli said.
The woman walked up to the front of the bus and knelt down, saying “baby’s coming, baby’s coming,” he said.
“Lucky for her, Christopher Accettulli, an experienced bus driver but also a great human being, stayed calm and cool,” said MTA CEO Janno Lieber.
Accettulli called his supervisors and 911, who dispatched an ambulance. But, as he helped the woman stand up, her water broke, he said, and it became clear that the baby would arrive before any medical professionals could.
Accettulli has a 25-year-old daughter of his own, but her birth hadn’t prepared him for what was about to happen.
“It was in the hospital, I was far away from the action,” he said. “I was just a bystander on that one.”
Following instructions from the 911 dispatcher, Accettulli helped the woman pull her pants down and caught the baby as she made her grand and surprising entrance.
“I put her in my sweater, wrapped her up, I rubbed her back to make sure she was awake,” he said.
The baby’s mother didn’t speak fluent English, he said, and wasn’t totally sure what he was doing — but the baby was crying, and when the EMTs finally arrived, they gave her a clean bill of health. An ambulance whisked the pair to New York Presbyterian-Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where they were both doing well after their ordeal.
“I’m just happy that the baby’s doing fine,” Accettulli said. “I was just doing what a regular person would do. If somebody’s having issues, you help them out as best you can.”
The driver was ready to get back to work right after the pair headed to the hospital, said MTA president Demetrius Crichlow.
“The humility of this guy, saying, after delivering a baby ‘What’s my next bus out?’” Crichlow said. “That is a dedicated employee, and that is representative of the people that we have that run this organization.”
The bus itself was cleaned up and ready to return to service that evening, Crichlow said.
It wasn’t the first time a New Yorker has entered the world via public transportation. In 2009, a Brooklyn mom riding the R train from her home to her hospital in Queens ended up giving birth on board the train. Just a day later, another bundle of joy arrived via the B61 in Greenpoint.
Another MTA baby, who was born onboard a busy W train in Manhattan last February, is nearing her first birthday.
“We have the top-tier employees that work for us,” Crichlow said. “And not only do they drive great buses, they deliver beautiful babies.”
