Nine months after Hurricane Sandy devastated the northeast, New York City and the surrounding area will soon be seeing a hurricane "baby boom" and an influx of mothers ready to deliver in local hospitals, Metro.us reports.
After thousands of local residents were trapped in their homes without power, much food or much else to do, couples found themselves becoming more intimate, and the result is known as the "Hurricane Sandy baby boom."
Doctors are predicting quite a boom this summer, and in the past few weeks, one OB/GYN practice has seen more than a 30 percent increase in women coming in to schedule July and August births, according to the New York Post.
"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?" Linda Roberts, a nurse manager at an OB/GYN office in Westchester, said to the Post. "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."
Thousands were left without power, heat, public transportation and gas supplies after the storm devastated the region in late October. Dr. Jacques Moritz, director of the division of gynecology at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, said to the Post that New York sees "bumps in births after blizzards, storms and blackouts", and that the length of Sandy's aftermath is significant, even though birth rates apparently tend to peak in New York in July.
"In the past, there was a bump during 9/11, there have been bumps after blackouts and hurricanes, but Sandy went on for quite a while, and events that cause power outages really bring - how should I say this? - people closer together," he said. "In the tri-state area, you will probably see a little rise in people who were unable to get their birth control, and other issues like that."
When asked about his own Midtown OB/GYN practice, he confirmed pregnancies have been on the rise since the superstorm.
"Oh yeah, we've seen our share of Sandy babies," he said. "I've had five or six who have come in and pointed out to me, 'This is a Sandy baby!'"
According to Business Insider, the idea of a post-crisis baby boom dates back to at least 1965, when a blackout plunged New York City into total darkness for several hours on a November night. The following August, the New York Times wrote about a "sharp increase in births" in the city's local hospitals, proclaiming the headline: "BIRTHS UP 9 MONTHS AFTER THE BLACKOUT."
When TVs and telephones don't work, the subways aren't running, offices and stores are closed, and people are mainly stuck in side with little else to do, perhaps it makes sense that couples would increase how often they had sex out of boredom and need for comfort.
Metro.us reported that chief of obstetrics at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Amos Drunebaum, said his hospital expects a 20 to 30 percent increase in births from the previous year.
