NEW SLICE OF LIFE
Kin seek pics of tot born at pizzeria
Here’s one pizza shop that really delivers.
Tiara Puglisi gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Charlie Joseph Hillman, in the front seat of her SUV outside Rocco’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn.
A crowd gathered as Puglisi went into labor, and dad Eric Hillman delivered the blue-eyed baby while they waited for an ambulance to arrive.
Now the parents are asking the strangers who witnessed the dramatic Aug. 26 delivery for baby pictures.
“Yes, I’m the lady who gave birth in her car outside Rocco’s pizzeria and shut down DeKalb Avenue,” Puglisi posted on Facebook.
“If you were there and happened to capture photos or video, it would be greatly appreciated if you could text or e-mail them to me at bedstuybaby826 @gmail.com.
“We even call him Rocco.”
Puglisi told The Post she had a feeling Charlie was coming that weekend and she woke up that day determined to hit every bigbox store in preparation for his debut. She didn’t get very far.
“My husband and I were supposed to go on a date for our anniversary that weekend, and I told him, ‘I don’t think we will make it to dinner,’ ” she said. “Then I was in Babies ‘R’ Us when I started to get pretty aggressive contractions.”
Puglisi and Hillman rushed to their BedfordStuyvesant home to drop off their 15-month-old daughter at a neighbor’s before heading to NYU Langone in Manhattan.
They made it two blocks before Puglisi ordered her husband to pull over and call 911. “The pain was so unreal. I just kept thinking ‘Why is this happening to me? When will this end?’ ” she said.
Hillman rushed to the passenger’s side, flung open the door and saw Charlie crowning.
“When my husband said he saw the head, I knew it was really happening,” Puglisi said.
Puglisi was in so much pain that the rubberneckers snapping photos and video with their smartphones didn’t faze her.
Puglisi wrapped Charlie in an onlooker’s blanket, and Hillman collected congratulatory handshakes. Charlie arrived at 2:45 p.m., or about 10 minutes before the first responders did. Onlookers cheered as mother and son were whisked away in an ambulance.
“It was such an adrenaline rush. I was shaking . . . afterwards,” Puglisi said.
The marketing director and her accountant husband said the crazy birth has prepared Charlie well for life with two young siblings.
“When he was born, he didn’t wail or anything, he just looked at me like ‘I’m here’ and made a very small noise,” she said. “He’s a very go-with-theflow baby. He deals with a lot of chaos in our house.”