Birth on the W Train Is Being Called a ‘Miracle,’ but Was It?

In the middle of a weekday, subways are typically filled with people going about their daily routines. Nina Burleigh, a journalist and professor, was doing just that. She was riding the W train, which she takes every week, to go teach a graduate journalism course at NYU.

On Wednesday, Feb. 12, everything was same-old: get on the train, take it a few stops downtown and go teach a five-hour reporting seminar. That was the plan, at least, but then she heard a baby cry from the opposite end of the subway car.

“I’m a mother, I have two kids. I just thought, I’m going to go down there and see if the mother is okay,” Burleigh said. “As I got closer, I saw a body on the floor.”

That’s when Burleigh realized that a woman, who was later identified by her older sister as 25-year-old Jenny Saint Pierre of Hallandale Beach, Fla., had given birth on the floor of the train. Her newborn was still attached by the umbilical cord. Only after Burleigh yelled for a medic did more people approach the scene.

Burleigh wrapped the baby, a girl, in a cloth that she believes belonged to the mother and proceeded to ask her if she was okay.

“I’m fine, I’m okay,” Pierre responded, according to Burleigh. “Can I have some scissors?”

Pierre was looking for someone to cut the umbilical cord. A nearby woman pulled out a box cutter and handed it to a man standing next to Burleigh.

“No, her,” Pierre said, pointing to Burleigh, seemingly wanting a woman to do the job.

Burleigh recalls that she had to pass on the responsibility since she was not qualified.

“A woman comes around the other side, and goes, ‘I guess I’ll do it,’ and so she cuts the cord with the box cutter, right in front of everybody,” Burleigh said. “Then we pulled into the station. So all of this happens between 42nd and 34th Street.”

The police met the train at the Herald Square station, passengers transferred to other active subways, and Burleigh continued on with her day, reeling from the event that had just transpired.

News of the subway birth traveled quickly, and within a few hours, the story had circulated across various media platforms as a video of the baby’s birth was posted on TikTok.

“My husband sent me the Gothamist story with the headline, ‘Miracle on 34th Street,’ and I just thought, Sorry, you’re getting it all wrong,” Burleigh said, offering an alternative experience. “I understand why [the Gothamist] wanted to say that, and I understand why the cops would say that. But it was not a miracle. It was a miracle, maybe, that the child was not dead, because that could have happened. But clearly that woman gave birth with people sitting right there. There’s no way that they didn’t notice there was somebody on the floor writhing, or whatever you do when you have a baby, right? They didn’t do anything. There were literally people just sitting in their chairs.”

Burleigh explained that this event points to a larger issue about homelessness and mental illness throughout the city. There are people suffering who aren’t properly accounted for, leaving them to hide away in subway cars where everyday citizens are either ill-equipped or choose to ignore the situation.

Many people who were on the train immediately turned to social media, which is another aspect of the experience that is unsettling to Burleigh.

“We were sitting around her, and there was a crowd around us. I didn’t see it, but I knew that there were people videotaping,” she said. “That also is kind of sickening.”

Burleigh adds that the TikTok video makes it look like they helped Pierre give birth, when in reality that’s not what happened. The mother had already birthed the baby on her own.

“There was no way I was a doula,” said Burleigh. [A doula is a person who provides guidance to a pregnant woman during childbirth.] “I put the blanket on the baby, or the little T-shirt, you know, to cover her up,” Burleigh said. “But we did not help that woman give birth. She did it completely without any help.”

According to the New York Times, Pierre’s family had reported her missing since last summer. In August, the Hallandale Beach, Fla., Police Department had issued a “endangered missing person” bulletin for the woman, who was already six months pregnant and who was said by her family to be schizophrenic.

After giving birth, Pierre was transported to NYC Health and Hospital/Bellevue where both she and her baby girl were reported to be in good health, a police spokesperson told Straus News.

Burleigh is thankful that the mother and her newborn are okay, but continues to replay the event, disturbed that anyone would ever have to go through such a thing.

“I couldn’t get that little, tiny face out of my head. That little, tiny girl on the dirty, dirty floor, naked,” she said. “It was really appalling and a searing kind of image that I won’t forget anytime soon.”