Baby born in parking garage at Maryland hospital

Aug. 29 (UPI) -- An impatient baby was born in a Maryland hospital's parking garage with help from an OB-GYN who happened to overhear the commotion.

Elsa Antunez, 23, rushed to Luminis Health Anne Arundel Medical Center with her family when she went into labor, but they arrived to discover the birth would not wait for them to get inside the building.

Dr. Janelle Cooper, an OB-GYN at the hospital, was walking through the garage when she heard the birth in progress.

"I heard her screaming in the car and I said, 'Oh, that sounds like labor and delivery,'" Cooper told WJLA-TV.

Cooper said she has lost count of the number of babies she has delivered, but this was her first one in the parking garage.

"When I opened the car door, the baby's head was already out. So, I did what came naturally as an OB," Cooper said.

Antunez gave birth to a healthy daughter, which she named Yesenia.

"I'm very grateful you were there because I wouldn't have known what would happen if you weren't there," Antunez told Cooper.

The birth was a first for Cooper, but it wasn't the first to happen in the parking garage -- nurse Maria Moody previously helped Lindsay McGee deliver her baby in the same structure in September 2022.