Woman Delivers Baby At Home During Hurricane Harvey

Keep Reading ↓

Sunday morning, residents of Houston found themselves trapped on rooftops and wading through flooded streets with children riding on their shoulders after Hurricane Harvey.

Many in Houston were in a living nightmare. They woke up to find they were trapped inside their flooded houses and unable to receive aid from first responders, who were inundated with more than 2,000 calls for help.

More than 1,000 residents had to be rescued overnight while the storm dumped anywhere from 15 to 30 inches of rain across southeast Texas. The heavy rain, along with the overflowing of Houston’s bayous, meant water levels in some areas could reach 50 inches according to weather reports.

As the worst of Hurricane Harvey battered Corpus Christi, a heavily pregnant woman, Isabel Pena felt another pain –  labor pain.

At 38 weeks pregnant, she knew exactly what that meant.

“I just kept trying to tell him: ‘She was coming. She was coming,’” Pena said.

Her family tried to call for help.

“We got on the phone and we called EMS but we didn’t ever think they were going to show up as bad as it was. The wind was blow bad and there was debris everywhere,”said Pena’s boyfriend Andrew Garza.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Pena’s house had no electricity. Her family had been in the dark for hours and the only light they had was from a cell phone.

 “I had walked away with the light to the front door to see if EMS was coming and then I hear her scream: ‘We need the light,’ so I came back and as soon as I got back to the room I seen her head and then right then it was over,” Garza said.

Kataleya Rose arrived at around 3 a.m. Saturday, but she wasn’t breathing. Luckily, that’s when an emergency crew arrived.

“She was out and not even two seconds later, they were already knocking at the door,” Pena said.

From there on, a paramedic took over and the baby began to scream and cry.

“That’s when I knew she was going to be OK,” Garza said.

It wasn’t over just yet as they still needed to get to the hospital.  The trip took longer than usual because of the dangerous weather.

“The ambulance was still dodging debris, trees down,” Garza said.

The ambulance finally made it to Christus Spohn South hospital.

“The baby was immediately was evaluated by a pediatrician here at the hospital and found to be fine and the mother, of course, was evaluated as well and she was completely stable,” said Dr. Kathleen Rasmussen, who works in the hospital’s labor and delivery department.

Pena and Garza are utterly grateful to paramedics and hospital staff to have a healthy 6 pound, 9-ounce baby girl.

“She wanted to make her entrance, so she’s here,” Pena said.

Kataleya Rose wasn’t the only baby born during the hurricane as Doctors and nurses at Christus Spohn South delivered a baby boy and a baby girl during Hurricane Harvey.

At Corpus Christi Medical Center, a mother, Irma Rodriguez, delivered a boy and named him Harvey.