Raining Babies in Huntington

Lori Scicutella likes to plan everything. 

The expectant mom, close to her delivery date last week, thought she had it all figured out — until Irene came calling.

"I had plans on having the baby later in the week, certainly not during the hurricane," said Scicutella, set to deliver her second child on schedule at Southside Hospital near her Oakdale home until her plan got sidetracked as the storm tracked closer to Long Island. 

By Friday, Southside was ordered evacuated leaving the young mom and husband, Anthony, scrambling to find an alternate course of action.

Meanwhile, began discharging patients to make room for Southside evacuees. Elective surgeries were postponed, emergency generators were tested and supplies were secured to last through the weekend. Conference rooms were lined with cots for for around the clock accommodations.

Huntington delivery and other units began to fill with 45 patients safely evacuated from the Southside, one from Good Samaritan Medical Center in Islip. Many expectant moms and those that had already delivered at Southside were arriving in Huntington without prenatal records or appointed physicians, creating a tough situation. 

"They were nervous, they didn't know us ... they were sort of alone," said Cathy Lombardo, nurse manager of Huntington Hospital nursery. She said the hardest thing wasn't the hurricane, it was not knowing the patients. "You can't separate the mom and the baby until you know who they are."

For three days, three doctors and one alternate, working 24-hour shifts, successfully delivered baby after baby.

"Every time somebody delivered, the bed was filled within a half an hour," said Susan Dodge, a longtime Huntington registered nurse. "And that went on all weekend long."

Theresa Mancini, a 15-year registered nurse at Huntington Hospital said it looked sort of like a MASH unit by the time she arrived early Saturday through high winds and a wave of water which came over her car hood at the intersection of Park and 25A.

Arriving in delivery to a hospital on generator power, no air conditioning and walls dripping with condensation, Mancini said, nurses, drenched with sweat, pointed fans at patients to try to keep them cool as the babies kept coming.

"We've had busy units but this is the first time I've ever worked where we had no power and such an influx of patients at the same time," said Mancini.

Back in Oakdale at about 1 a.m. Saturday, Scicutella said she began to feel pressure and knew she had to get somewhere quick. In the face of hurricane headwinds and behind the "slowest person possible," the couple left their 4-year-old girl with grandma and boarded their Nissan SUV for a harrowing trip down the expressway toward an already overflowing Huntington Hospital.

"I blew a few lights and got lost," said Anthony, with a laugh. "We were a little panicked. The road was littered with leaves and sticks and stuff. When we got to Huntington, a light a transformer was actually blowing up on Park Avenue."

The couple arrived just before 3 a.m. Saturday.

Mary Colarini, an experienced nurse of 34 years in Huntington compared the hurricane situation to that of an ice storm which crippled Huntington around 1977. "There were lots of babies and we were all snowed in," she said.

In all, 18 deliveries were successfully completed during the weekend (none named Irene); 10 transferred from Southside on Saturday alone. One of those transfered in was Caroline Price of Huntington, from Plainview Hospital on Sunday.

"I was so out of it. I wasn't even thinking about a hurricane. I just wanted to have him," said Price, who gave birth to Khiry, a healthy baby boy Sunday, her third.

Price, a Wheatley Heights mom, broke water five weeks early as the barometric pressure began to drop after working a double shift Friday. She said everybody at Huntington Hospital made her feel comfortable.

"The best part of weekend is when got the call that Southside was open again," said nurse Dodge — But not for that couple from Oakdale.

With their labor room filled with the noise of a howling hurricane winds 10 hours after arriving at the hospital, little Adriana Claire Scicutella arrived at 12:04 p.m. — two hours after Hurricane Irene arrived in Huntington.

"It was a wild 72 hours," said Anthony. "But with a happy ending," said Lori.