So what do you name a baby boy when he is born on the Capital Beltway? Lane? Myles? Parker? Lupe, perhaps, if you want something a little more abstract?
One mom will get the opportunity after giving birth early Friday morning near the Tysons (Tyson!) Corner exit with an assist from Fairfax County paramedics.
The 27-year-old woman pulled over on the outer loop about 5 a.m. because she was going into labor. Emergency crews arrived to take her to the hospital by ambulance.
"The call was for a woman in labor, on the beltway," Fairfax County firefighter Jeff Kutner said. "[We] brought the stretcher over, thinking we wanted to get off the beltway as quickly as possible."
But the baby couldn't wait.
"[I] called out to the front and said, 'baby's coming!'" Kutner said. "The baby [was] born; we were holding him ... You have to be really careful because they're really slippery. I wrapped the baby, and then passed him up to the mom."
Both mom and her beltway baby made it to INOVA Fairfax Hospital healthy and safe.
"Certainly they said thank you, but it was really the look on their face that said even more than that, you could tell just how happy they were," Kutner added.
WTOP Radio reports the paramedics had just taken a continuing education course on "Prehospital Childbirth without Complications."
The county has not released the mother's name, or the baby's.
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Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
The newborn's arrival is the latest in a series of births in unexpected places around the area. Babies have been born on Interstate 270, on Nebraska Avenue NW, and on a Metro platform in recent months.
There has been an almost 20 percent spike since 2009 in baby deliveries in locations outside homes, hospitals and clinics and performed by people other than doctors, nurses and midwives, according to an investigation by the News-4 I-Team.
Experts say mothers are choosing to deliver at hospitals further from home -- and of course, congestion is also often to blame.
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