Meet the Blizzard Baby Born in a Hospital Without Power
Photo: Nantucket Cottage Hospital Foundation/Facebook
"I didn’t even realize we were running on a generator until the lights flickered,” Danielle Smith tells Yahoo Parenting of giving birth to her “blizzard baby,” son Cayden Keith Moore, at Nantucket Cottage Hospital in the wee hours of Tuesday morning when the entire Massachusetts island was blacked out as snow pounded the Northeast. “Honestly, I didn’t know how bad it had gotten outside.”
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The 22-year-old had her mind on other things, of course. Namely delivering her first-born, with boyfriend Corrigan Moore, 19. “We weren’t expecting anything to happen that night,” explains Smith, who started contracting Sunday night, though she wasn’t due for another week and a half. She’d gone into the hospital for a checkup on Monday and decided to take up the doctors’ offers to head in early to avoid possible transit trouble. At that point the snowfall was still fluffy, she marvels. “I got in right before the storm hit.”
As soon as the expecting mom rolled in, the hospital staff went on alert. “The nurses were all like, ‘It could be a blizzard baby! That would be so exciting.’” says Smith.
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Smith’s doctor, Margaret “Mimi” Koehm, tells CNN that the hospital actually called all of their patients close to term to offer them boarding at the facility “in case they didn’t have vehicles that could get them through the blizzard in their time of need.”
Turns out Smith needed that help sooner than she expected. “I didn’t think I was progressing as fast as I was,” she admits. But when the power went out at the hospital around midnight, she was well into labor. At 3:53 a.m. Smith welcomed her healthy 6 pound, 5 ounce “blizzard baby” into the world without even having time for an epidural. Dr. Koehm declares, “Danielle is a super star.”
Danielle Smith, Corrigan Moore, and Cayden Moore. Photo: Courtesy of Danielle Smith
And now that the story of her little snow angel has gotten lots of media attention, Smith and Cayden are media stars as well. “I didn’t think it’d become this big deal,” she admits. “The whole thing has been such a good experience but the extra attention just makes it so much more exciting.”
Still, she’s looking forward to putting the flurry of news stories (not to mention the snow) behind her and going home with her son as soon as she’s sure their home has heat. “Some people have been like, ‘Give him ‘Juno’ as a fourth name for the storm,’” the mom tells Yahoo Parenting. “But I’m like, ‘No, this can just be a good memory.’”
Photo: Courtesy of Danielle Smith
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