Nurse, strangers help deliver unexpected baby at Burning Man

Maureen O'Reilly, the RN who helped deliver baby Aurora in the Nevada desert at Burning Man. (KGO via CNN Newsource)

SAN FRANCISCO, California (KGO) - Dust storms, a homicide investigation, and even a baby’s birth, those are some of the headlines from Burning Man 2025, the eight-day festival in Black Rock City, Nevada.

As many as 80,000 people attended this year, including a registered nurse of 25 years from Berkeley who just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

The baby, named Aurora, came in at 3 pounds, 9.6 ounces and 16.5 inches. Her mother was 35 weeks pregnant, but did not know she was pregnant until she went into labor!

A cryptic pregnancy, they all later learned, which happens to about 1 in 2,500 women, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

ABC7 News spoke to Maureen O’Reilly, the RN who helped deliver baby Aurora in the Nevada desert. O’Reilly had already been there for about a week

“She did not look pregnant, not one bit!” said O’Reilly, who has experience working in neonatal critical care. O’Reilly said the baby was named Aurora since she was born Wednesday morning and her presence lit up the sky.

It was Wednesday morning around 8:30 a.m., O’Reilly was brewing coffee for everyone as part of her festival routine. She and her campmates were sitting under their tent, with plastic bags over their shoes to avoid all the mud left behind by days of dust storms and rain.

“My campmates ran over and said ‘Somebody just had a baby!’” recounted O’Reilly. “And so I just took off. They lifted the baby just as I got into the RV. They were cutting the cord.”

Two other strangers, an emergency nurse and an OBGYN, also sprang into action. They handed the O’Reilly the newborn girl.

“I started yelling at people to turn the heat on, to get me some blankets,” said O’Reilly. “It was just so frightening how you know we’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing.”

O’Reilly said medics eventually made it in, taking baby Aurora to the mobile hospital. She was eventually airlifted to a local hospital in Reno.

“I think I feel a certain closeness to the baby, just because I was the very first person to hold her in her moments of life,” said O’Reilly. “The parents have already called me third grandma, which is so sweet.”

O’Reilly had a chance to visit Aurora and her parents in the hospital NICU on Sunday.

“To have that experience, to take care of a little child that really needed me in those moments,” expressed O’Reilly, through tears. “I’m just so grateful. Being able to do that.”

O’Reilly has been to thirteen Burning Man festivals and said of them all, this ranks the highest in terms of memorable.

“100 per cent, the most memorable thing I’ll ever experience in my life.”

O’Reilly said she didn’t get the names or contact info of the two people who helped deliver Aurora, but she is curious about who they are.

By Frances Wang.