BABY FINN SWEENEY was in a rush to make his way into the world. Such a rush in fact, that he didn’t even wait to get to the hospital.

He was born in the back of a New York taxi in Manhattan last Wednesday, as his mother, Irish American Aoibheann Sweeney, and her partner Dubliner Inez Murray tried in vain to get to their doctor. Irish Central reports that it was Murray herself who delivered the baby, moments before emergency services arrived on the scene an 51st Street and Seventh Avenue. They had called the cab about an hour earlier after Sweeney’s contractions swiftly intensified.

She told the New York Post that she considered trying to hold the baby in, but that she knew that wasn’t going to work. Cab driver Juan Hernandez says he just kept driving until police and paramedics caught up with the car. Baby Finn’s cord was cut, watched by a large crowd of onlookers, and mother and baby were then transferred to hospital in an ambulance.

Inez Murray is the Vice President of Women’s World Banking in New York. She’s lived in the Big Apple since the early nineties, and her parents still live in Stepaside in Dublin. Aoibheann Sweeney meanwhile is an Irish American with Donegal roots. The pair say that baby Finn’s first trip to Ireland is already being planned.