PORTLAND, Ore. — Just before 6 p.m. Saturday, a harrowing 911 call came in from a Southwest Portland homeless camp at the bottom of the Morrison Bridge: A 26-year-old woman was in labor and about to give birth in an orange tent on the corner of Harvey Milk Street and First Avenue.
“All of a sudden, she’s just like, ‘Becky, help me! Please help me!’ and I’m like, ‘What, baby?’ and she goes ‘It hurts! It hurts!’ and I’m like, ‘OK, let’s call 911,’” recalled Becky, a friend of the 26-year-old who stays a few tents down the street.
Fighting back tears, Becky showed a KGW crew the green cart she laid her friend on two days ago and the blue tarp she used to wrap her in — it was the cleanest thing she had at the time, she said.
“I just told her, "Relax.' She goes, ‘I’m scared.’ I said, ‘It’s OK,’” Becky said, recalling the moments she helped her friend give birth.
“I just told her, ‘You’re going to have to push, and you’re going to have to bear down as hard as you can.’ So, she gave a couple pushes and said, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t do this.’ I’m like, ‘Honey, I don’t have no pain medicine for you. I don’t have nothing. So, we’re just going to have to do it like cavemen did,’” Becky continued.
Paramedics arrived about five minutes later.
“Baby’s head was crowning and I’m like, ‘OK, baby you’re going to have to push. Somebody get a blanket, a clean blanket’ … It's dirty out here, you know, but babies are going to come when they’re going to come… I think it was about six pushes and out came baby,” Becky said.
Once the baby was born on the tarp, paramedics took the woman and newborn to the hospital. According to dispatch, the woman had fentanyl in her system and was still in the hospital at last check.
As of Tuesday night, there was no word on the baby’s condition.
This is the second reported time this year Portland Fire and Rescue have responded to a birth in a homeless camp in downtown Portland.
“We train for this. We have a specific kit in all our medical kits that are for the event we are at an imminent birth; we are prepared to do so… I don’t know that people are falling through the cracks as much as people aren’t really receptive of receiving the assistance out there,” said Rick Graves, the spokesperson for Portland Fire and Rescue.
“Some women addicted, some women not addicted, whatever the case may be — I just wish there were more outreach for women without [chastisement]… She could have been alone,” said Becky.
Portland Fire and Rescue’s Community Health Team went back to the camp the following day to try and offer the people there housing and other resources. No one accepted their offer, and they could not find the father of the baby.