As the hurricane made landfall in Flboy was born. No, his name won’t be Ian.
On Tuesday afternoon, as the hurricane approached their stretch of Florida coast, Amanda Mahr and her husband, Matthew Mahr, received an urgent call from their doctor: they needed to schedule an emergency C-section.
The baby was four days overdue, and the ultrasound that morning revealed that fluid levels were too low to delay delivery until after the storm. The baby had to come, hurricane or no hurricane.
They rushed to the hospital through a drizzle and overcast skies, nervously eyeing neighbors in Cape Coral who were putting up shutters as a last-minute precaution. The storm was expected to make landfall further south than previously predicted.
With Hurricane Ian lapping at the coast the next morning, power went out across the region, and wind gusts of more than 60 miles per hour whipped their city.
“We’ve taken a direct hit. Ms. Mahr recalled hospital staff telling her, “We want to schedule you right now.”
George was born shortly before 9 a.m., a healthy 10 pound, 6 ounce baby boy with a full head of black hair. The exhausted patients were told not to look out their second-floor window because it would only make them anxious.
The Mahrs and other expectant mothers and parents with newborns were shuffled into the hallways around 2:30 p.m., with their almost-6-hour-old baby, to ride out the worst of the storm. After reaching a high wind speed of 155 m.p.h., Ian was about to touch down on land.
They listened to the beating rain, howling wind, and thrashing trees for hours through the locked doors. They pondered their options for housing as well as what might have happened to the nursery they had prepared for George. Concerned about their 1-year-old cat, Mazikeen, whom they were forced to leave behind, they worried.
According to Ms. Mahr, 36, who owns a gourmet cupcake company, “He’s absolutely the talk of the hospital because he’s so chubby and so cute,” in a phone interview on Thursday night from her hospital bed. He has very amazing hair.
Her 37-year-old husband reported that when he left the hospital on Thursday afternoon, the city appeared to have been through a monster truck rally. The streets were covered in a variety of debris, including roofing materials, fallen power poles, and artificial grass turf. Every every billboard and street sign appeared to have been destroyed by wind.
They were permitted to return to their delivery suite around 9 o’clock. The parents and their newborn were in high spirits, and it appeared that the hospital had survived the storm relatively unscathed.
Their ground-floor flat was littered with glass from two broken windows, but otherwise undamaged, according to Mr. Mahr. Mazikeen was inconsolable yet secure in the nursery. He claimed that the space was spotless and precisely as they had left it.
On Thursday, nearby hospitals in the same health system had to evacuate patients due to issues with the provision of water and electricity. Cape Coral, the hospital owned by the Mahrs, lost electricity Thursday afternoon but continued to operate normally using a generator, according to the pair.
People have been wondering if they will change the boy’s name to Ian throughout. They stated that they are content to continue using George Bentley, both family names.