When it snows, babies follow

Winter blizzards credited for current upsurge in births

Betsy Lehndorff, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 26, 2007 at midnight

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The forecast for early fall: warm and sunny, with an occasional flurry of babies.

About nine months ago, the Blizzard of '06 brought Front Range communities to a halt, and apparently romance blossomed.

"We are seeing in our practice a 20 percent bump in October," said obstetrician Steve Grover, who delivers babies at SkyRidge Women's Center in Lone Tree.

Several other hospitals are reporting booms.

Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville has printed blizzard-baby T-shirts for its bumper crop of newborns.

City of Denver snowplow mechanic Randy Romero snagged one Tuesday. Nine months earlier, the 24- year-old had been working 12-hour shifts to keep the trucks rolling.

One evening he got home to find that his partner, Dayna Wilson, had made dinner and gotten her two daughters to bed.

"I was trying to recover from work," Romero said. "We just cuddled up to get warm, and this happened."

Their blizzard baby, Ricky Lee Romero, was born Tuesday, weighing 6 pounds, 11 ounces.

At Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Marjorie Silva gave birth Sept. 12, a week before her due date. A native of Peru, she giggles about what happened when the first storm, Dec. 20-21, dumped 20-plus inches of snow.

"It was cold, and we took a bath together," she said, referring to husband Hansell. "And one thing led to another. He wanted to go outside and play with the snow, and I didn't want to. . . . We just ate and stayed in bed."

People often perceive baby booms nine months and two weeks after a major event occurs that keeps people indoors - such as a snowstorm or power outage.

"It comes from our romantic views of what happens when the electricity goes off," said S. Philip Morgan, professor of sociology at Duke University. "People turn off the TV; people light candles and get more romantic."

But some of these moments aren't always that sexy.

Nine months after the July 13, 1977, blackout left 9 million New Yorkers without power for 25 hours, newspapers reported a baby boom at several hospitals.

Morgan, citing research by others, says otherwise.

"The New York outage occurred on an extremely hot day, and there is a lot of discomfort that power outages cause," Morgan said.

Blizzard-baby moms

CARRIE HANKINS, 31, BROOMFIELD

• Family profile: Carrie and husband Ken are expecting their third child, Ennek, and are planning for a home birth. Hankins is a doula and aspiring midwife.

• Conception: After Dec. 21

• Birth: Any day now. Their son will be born at home.

• What did the trick? "We don't know how. Things got really crazy after the first snowstorm," Carrie said. "Between the holidays, we had a birthday for my 9-year-old, we were looking for a house and we were digging out. It was the first time in months we weren't trying."

LEIGH ANNA BUCK, 29, HIGHLANDS RANCH

• Family profile: Leigh Anna and husband Jared are expecting their first child Saturday. Leigh Anna is an accountant, and Jared is a court administrator in Breckenridge.

• Conception: "We're not exactly sure - the end of December, early January. We had been trying for a long time," Leigh Anna said.

• Birth: Joseph James will be born at Swedish Medical Center.

• What did the trick? "It was probably that we just had some time together," Leigh Anna said. "We were relaxed."

MARJORIE SILVA, 32, CENTENNIAL

• Family profile: Marjorie and husband Hansell had put off having a second child because they were in the middle of opening a bakery in Englewood. Their 11-year-old son, Fernando, had been pleading for a baby brother.

• Conception: Around Dec. 21

• Birth: Santiago Silva was born a week early - at 7:31 a.m. Sept. 12, weighing 7 pounds, 2 ounces.

• What did the trick? "Fernando was snowed in at his grandmother's," Marjorie said.

Baby booms - real and imagined

• Real - 1946-64 U.S. baby boom: Returning World War II and Korean War veterans started families, producing 79 million newborns.

• Myth - 5:30 p.m. Nov. 9, 1965: Electricity went out in eight New England states and in New York City. In 1970, University of North Carolina researcher J. Richard Udry did an analysis of statistics and debunked the perception that a baby boom occurred.

• Myth - July 13, 1977: A blackout left 9 million people in New York City without power for up to 25 hours. Duke University professor S. Philip Morgan says research showed no boom.

• Real - April 19, 1995: The Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building produced a slight increase in the birth rate some nine months later, according to University of Oklahoma researcher Joseph Rodgers.

• Myth - Sept. 11, 2001: Several newspapers anticipated a baby boom after the terrorist attacks. However, Rodgers said, an MSNBC online report in July 2002 said there had been no sign of increased births. More research may be needed.

lehndorffb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2792

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