Sarah Swope woke up in severe pain, called 911 believing she was suffering a uterine prolapse, and within minutes was holding a newborn son she never knew she was carrying. The Parma, Ohio mother gave birth to Connor Joseph “CJ” Swope on June 20, with the help of Parma firefighters who arrived at her home moments after her call for help.
Swope told Cleveland.com that she reached down during the ordeal and felt the baby crowning, a moment that upended everything she thought was happening to her body. Her husband, Jeremy Swope, had persuaded her to stay home from work that day because of the pain she was experiencing, unaware that what she described as back labor was in fact labor. The night before, she had been out pulling weeds in the yard, with no indication that she was hours from giving birth.
According to the same account, Swope experienced her water breaking and severe cramps before the delivery. Parma firefighter Carter Adams was the one who identified that Swope was actively delivering a baby once crews arrived, and he assisted with Connor's birth. Swope pushed for about three seconds before her son arrived, weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces.
A Newborn Who Needed Immediate Help
Connor was not breathing immediately after birth, and Adams helped him breathe by repeatedly flipping him upside down, the outlet reported. Swope also hemorrhaged during the birth. Parma Fire Chief Lou Davis praised the responding crew's professionalism, clinical judgment, and composure in handling the emergency, according to Cleveland.com's report.
Parma firefighters are credited with saving the lives of both Sarah Swope and her son that day. The crew responded from Parma Fire Station No. 5, located near the Swope family home, one of five municipal fire stations covering the city, per the City of Parma.
Signs Misread As Something Else
Sarah and Jeremy Swope had been trying to conceive for three years, making the unexpected birth all the more disorienting. Sarah reported having four or five periods during what turned out to be her pregnancy, and she developed varicose veins in late April. Her weight fluctuated as well: she lost weight after stopping dairy in the fall and gained it back after restarting dairy in the spring, changes she attributed to diet rather than pregnancy.
Cases like hers, while rare, are documented in clinical literature. The Cleveland Clinic estimates that roughly 1 in 2,500 pregnancies goes completely undetected by the mother until labor begins, a phenomenon known as a cryptic or denied pregnancy. A broader Berlin population study cited by the National Institutes of Health put the incidence at roughly 1 in 2,455 pregnancies going undetected all the way to delivery, while an estimated 1 in 475 pregnant people remain unaware until at least 20 weeks along. Research published by the NIH also indicates that up to 86 percent of women with cryptic pregnancies report continued periodic vaginal bleeding or spotting, a detail that lines up with Swope's account of having several periods while she was carrying Connor.
Swope called her son “definitely a surprise,” and described him as healthy and a miracle baby.
Community Support Followed Quickly
Adams didn't stop at helping deliver the baby. He donated a tote of newborn clothing and diapers to the family and contacted the Parma Fire Department's charity committee to arrange additional assistance. Firefighters went on to provide the Swopes with clothing, socks, shoes, books, diapers and wipes, loading the donated supplies directly into the family's car.
Four days after Connor was born, the Swope family returned to Station No. 5 to visit the crew that had helped bring him into the world. It was a personal follow-up to a department that has spent much of 2026 focused on newborn safety. Chief Davis took command as Parma's ninth fire chief in June after more than 30 years with the department, and just weeks before Connor's birth made headlines, Parma Fire Station No. 3 added a Safe Haven Baby Box on Ridge Road, funded in part by a $10,000 donation from the local Knights of Columbus.
Under Ohio's Safe Haven Law, birth parents can legally and anonymously surrender an unharmed infant up to 30 days old at any staffed fire station, hospital, or police department without facing prosecution, according to the Ohio Department of Children and Youth. That infrastructure exists alongside a department handling an enormous call volume: Parma firefighters responded to 14,530 total service calls in 2025 and another 7,282 in the first half of 2026 alone.
Parma, the largest suburb in Cuyahoga County and in the state of Ohio with an estimated population of 78,581 residents, sits within a county where birth rates have been steadily falling. Cuyahoga County recorded 3,817 total live births in 2024, down from more than 5,700 in 2012. Against that backdrop, one unplanned delivery on a residential street became, for one crew and one family, an unforgettable exception to routine.
