A couple from Florida, USA, is overjoyed that their child was born during Hurricane Milton.
As Kenzie Lewellen’s labour started at her Port Charlotte, Florida, home at 4 a.m. on Wednesday this week, with Hurricane Milton threatening the Gulf Coast, she and her 24-year-old boyfriend, Dewey Bennett, were both on edge.
Lewellen, 22, remarked, “My mind was just going a million miles an hour, like, what am I going to do?” “I was quite anxious.”
The baby’s father, Bennett, stated in a Thursday interview that “I was very stressed.”
In 2017, Hurricane Irma devastated Florida, taking the life of Bennett’s own father, Dewey.
“My mind was just running a million miles an hour, like, what am I going to do?” said Lewellen, 22. “I was very nervous.”
Bennett, the baby’s father, said in an interview Thursday, “I was very stressed.”
In 2017, Bennett’s own father, also named Dewey, died when Hurricane Irma hit Florida.
“My dad had a massive heart attack because the ambulance could not come out to us during the storm,” he said.
At 8:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Hurricane Milton made landfall, resulting in significant floods and power outages for millions of people.
Prior to Lewellen’s contractions, the couple’s home was already absorbing water, despite the fact that significant damage hadn’t yet happened.
First-time mother Lewellen was 39 weeks along, and Bennett said the pair knew they would have a difficult time getting to the hospital if she “didn’t start having contractions until during the storm the roads would have been flooded.”
“I simply didn’t want to experience what the last hurricane in 2017 had caused me to go through,” he remarked.
On Florida’s east coast, at West Palm Beach, they had contemplated relocating. “It’s actually a good thing we didn’t, because they had, I believe, nine tornadoes before the storm even reached land,” Lewellen remarked.
“The day before, we were both calling the hospital and seeing if there was any way we can just check in,” she said. “But obviously during a storm, they don’t just let people come stay here, because they’re not a shelter.”
After Lewellen labored for 4½ hours at home, the couple traveled to Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Venice.
“My mom was driving us, and it was extremely windy, so we were trying to be as cautious as possible,” Lewellen said. “There was not really many people on the roads, because it was so windy outside and it was raining quite a bit.”
When they arrived, only one person could accompany her inside the hospital. So, Lewellen had to say goodbye to her mother.
“I was very, very upset that my mom couldn’t stay, because she is my best friend and one of my biggest supporters,” she said. But “we were able to FaceTime pretty much the entire time.”
“My mom and my aunt, they are extremely capable of taking care of themselves.” But, still, “I was very hopeful that everything would be OK for them,” she said.
She went through labor in a room with a window view of the devastation the hurricane unleashed as it pounded Sarasota but her man Bennett was by her side.
“I was telling him, I’m like, ‘Oh, that tree looks like it’s going to fly out of the ground!’ when I was laboring, because we were just watching the storm and the wind and the rain go crazy. It was definitely intense out there last night.” she said.
“And it actually did uproot,” Bennett added.
After having been in labor for hours, the doctor told Lewellen the baby was in the wrong position, and she would need a cesarean section.
“I had so much going through my head at that point, a storm and my family,” she said in an interview over Zoom Thursday.
“I was just on my own, by myself, and I was very scared. If I didn’t have the doctors and the nurses that I had, it would have been a whole lot worse,” she said.
In a statement Thursday, David Verinder, CEO of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, said: “We couldn’t be prouder of our team. They left their homes and many left their families to be here for our patients and community.”
Along with Kenzie and Dewey’s little boy, six other babies were born at the two Sarasota Memorial hospitals during Milton, Verinder said.
At 11:45 p.m, Dewey Lester Bennett, IV, was born, a healthy 8-pound boy.
“It is the most indescribable feeling. He’s a part of you and also part of the person you love.” Lewellen said.
Bennett said: “My cheeks hurt because I haven’t stopped smiling. It was great.”
“I’m probably going to give him a hard time for being so stubborn,” Lewellen joked. Some people have joked that his nickname should be Milton, she said.
“He is a miracle baby,” she said, holding him up.
