Hurricane Sandy's baby bump
The lights were out. The wind was howling. And New Yorkers held each other tight. Now, the city is expecting a summer of special deliveries
- Last Updated: 10:44 AM, February 28, 2013
- Posted: 10:44 PM, February 27, 2013
Jennifer Adamo and her boyfriend decided to ride out Superstorm Sandy together in her Staten Island apartment. For two scary days, they remained inside, only leaving once to see how bad things were getting outside. When they saw all of the downed trees and power lines, they quickly retreated back into the cold, dark apartment.
Without power, there was no TV or Internet to keep them entertained. So while they waited out the storm, they cuddled up and entertained themselves.
Six weeks later, as Staten Island was still reeling from the storm’s destruction, she discovered she was pregnant. At her annual gynecological visit, her doctor broke the shocking news, and Adamo began counting backward and quickly realized she had become pregnant during Sandy.
“Even though this baby is a surprise, it was such a great thing for our families after the devastation of the storm,” says Adamo, a 28-year-old account executive at a nonprofit.
She’s not the only one who discovered a silver lining. Adamo’s firstborn, a baby girl, will be part of what doctors in the area are predicting will be a Superstorm Sandy baby boom this summer.
In the past couple of weeks, one practice has seen more than a 30 percent increase in women coming in to schedule births for late July and early August.
“We started noticing a couple of weeks ago that we were getting really busy with phone calls and lab results and charts. We were like, what is going on here?” says Linda Roberts, a nurse manager at an OB/GYN office in Westchester.
“And then all of a sudden, it dawned on me! This is right about the time when people would be coming in because they got pregnant during Hurricane Sandy.
“I looked at between July 15 and Aug. 15, which is when those people would be due, and sure enough, we have about a third more people delivering during that period than we usually have.”
The storm ripped through New York and New Jersey in late October, leaving many without power for weeks. Offices closed, trains and subways were shut down and gas supplies were limited.
“I got lucky. I only lost power, but some parts of Staten Island were destroyed,” says Adamo. “My boyfriend’s parents’ house on Staten Island had really significant damage.
“[The baby] has put a smile back on his parents’ faces for the first time in a long time. We’re all really happy.”
Dr. Jacques Moritz, director of the division of gynecology at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, says that New York sees bumps in births after blizzards, storms and blackouts, and that the length of Sandy’s aftermath is significant.
