Hurricane Irma Baby Boom: A Perfect ‘Storm’ For Naming A Baby

MIAMI, FL — When a baby is determined to be born, even a behemoth like Hurricane Irma isn’t going to stop it — and there is some evidence hurricanes may even hasten the arrival of babies. So when a Key West woman realized her due date was precariously close to the arrival of Irma, at its angriest a Category 5 storm, she fled to Miami, where she delivered a healthy baby girl at a local hospital. When it came time to leave the hospital Saturday, Miami-Dade County police escorted the new mom and her daughter to a hotel, where they will ride out the storm.

The baby’s name? No, it’s not Irma, but one infinitely more poetic — Nayiri Storm — and the Miami-Dade Police Department hashtagged it a “perfect name” on Twitter. “Welcome to the world baby Nayiri Storm!” the department said. “Glad our officers were able to assist the family safely from hospital to hotel. #PerfectName.”

The photo posted by the police department showed the smiling new mom and Nayiri Storm, who is swaddled in a white blanket with utilitarian pink and blue stripes. (For more hurricane news or local news from Miami, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Miami Patch, and click here to find your local Florida Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

In the Little Haiti area of Miami, the situation was more urgent Sunday morning. Miami paramedics couldn’t respond when the woman went into labor, so doctors at Jackson Health System talked her through the delivery on the phone.

Assistant Fire Chief Eloy Garcia told the Miami Herald the woman and her baby, also a girl, are doing fine.
“We weren’t able to respond. So she delivered the placenta, also. Dispatch told her how to tie it off. She’s stable at home,” Garcia said. “We made contact with the assistant medical director here. Talked things through.”

Later Sunday, emergency responders with the Coral Springs police and fire departments helped a woman give birth to her baby girl in her home.

Very pregnant women all along Irma’s projected path of destruction have called hospitals, built to withstand powerful hurricanes, asking if they can take shelter until the threat of the monster weather system has passed. Hospitals aren’t storm shelters, though some make exceptions for women with high-risk pregnancies, STAT News reported.

Also See: Hurricane Irma Officially Arrives In Florida

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A 2007 study published in the Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics concluded that low barometric pressure can induce labor. The study looked at spontaneous deliveries at a Florida hospital from January 1997 to December 2003 and found “a significant increase” during times of low barometric pressure, and said it was “statistically significant.”

“Hurricanes don’t cause premature labor,” she told STAT News. “It’s like saying, ‘Oh my god, a full moon! We’re going to have a lot of babies.’ Theorists out there feel there’s a correlation. Do we change our practices because a storm comes by? No.”

Also among the skeptics is Dr. Jonathan Schaffir, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Ohio State University College of Medicine, who cited four studies — two suggesting lowering barometric pressure can cause pregnant women’s water to break, and two that found no correlation.

“It’s certainly not cut-and-dried, but there is some scientific evidence that changes in pressure can contribute to membrane rupture,” Schaffir told Live Science. “The idea behind this belief is that the amniotic sac is like a balloon, and if you lower the external pressure on it, there is an increased risk it can ‘pop.’ ”

Schaffir said he has never seen the theory proven in 18 years as a practicing obstetrician.

“In reality, the amniotic sac is protected. It’s kind of hard to imagine that a small drop in barometric pressure would cause a change in the amniotic sac,” he told Live Science.

STAT said some hospitals in Fort Myers Miami and Pembroke Pines will provide shelter for expectant mothers under some conditions.

In 1992, some 1,500 pregnant women, most of them in their third trimester, were hospitalized during Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm that caused extensive damage, though it was only about half the size of Irma.

Many babies were born, the Sun-Sentinel reported, including one named Savannah Stormy Waters and another named Andrew.

During Hurricane Harvey, which carved a path of destruction along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coasts late last month, at least five of the Memorial Hermann Health System’s 11 Houston-area hospitals reported increases in the number of deliveries.

Photo via Miami-Dade Police Department