Baby Delivered Outside Brooklyn Pizzeria: Mom Wants Pics

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — A Bed-Stuy mom is on the hunt for pictures to convince friends that her son Charlie came into the world in the front seat of her SUV parked outside a Brooklyn pizzeria.

"We don't believe you," Tiara Puglisi’s amazed audience says whenever she tells the story. “Give us a picture."

Puglisi and her husband were speeding toward Brooklyn Hospital in Fort Greene on Aug. 26 when the expectant mother realized her baby wasn’t going to wait for his mother to find a hospital bed, she said.

So she demanded her husband, Eric Hilman, pull over in front of Rocco Pizza on Dekalb and Tompkins avenues and call 911 around 2:30 p.m., she said.

“He didn’t believe me at first,” she said. “Then he confirmed the baby was coming right now.”

A crowd gathered around the car as Puglisi and Hilman struggled to deliver the baby in the front seat of the car, parked just two blocks away from the couple’s home, she said.

Puglisi heard photos snapping and her husband cursing at a 911 operator who guided him through the delivery, she said. Then, at 2:46 p.m., there was a sound Puglisi had never heard before in her life — it was the first utterance of her newborn son.

“He made this noise, it wasn’t crying, it wasn’t like anything,” Puglisi recalled. The 911 operator kept asking if the baby was breathing.

“He’s got blue eyes!” Hilman replied, then added, “My wife is holding the baby. Where the hell are you?”

Soon the black SUV was surrounded by so many police cars, ambulances and fire trucks that the B38 buses that run down the street had to be rerouted to make room, Puglisi recalled.

Puglisi and Charlie — who has a personality as "intense" as the day he was born — were taken to Brooklyn Hospital where the baby was treated for an increase in red blood cells, caused by the extra time he spent attached to the umbilical cord, his mom said.

It wasn’t until very late in the evening, when Puglisi and her husband posed for a photo with Charlie, that they realized they didn’t have a single picture of the day's big adventure, she said.

“I probably look crazy, but I don’t care what I look like,” said Puglisi. “I just want to capture everything from what happened.”

Which is why Puglisi has since started posting flyers around the neighborhood and writing posts on the BedStuy friends Facebook page asking anyone who took her picture that day to come forward.

“I’m the lady who gave birth in her car outside Rocco’s pizzeria and shut down Dekalb Avenue,” Puglisi wrote in her social media plea for photos on Tuesday.

“I’ve been hesitant to out myself on a somewhat public forum but curiosity is killing me.”

Puglisi is also working to track down public records of the 911 calls, she said. The mementos will help her finally convince her friends – and will probably end up in a baby book, she said.

But mostly, she wants to preserve the memory of the epic day for herself.

“Charlie was in my arms, people were shaking my husband’s hand,” she recalled. “I’ve had two babies before and I never thought this could happen.

“Someone has to have a picture.”

Anyone who might have a photo of the big event is asked to contact Puglisi at BedStuyBaby826@gmail.com.

Photos courtesy of Tiara Puglisi