A bump in metro babies

By Helena Oliviero

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

During January’s Snowpocalypse, Felicia and William Quarles were trapped inside their home for three days.

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Phil Skinner, pskinner@ajc.com Felicia Quarles holds her one-week-old baby William Isaiah Quarles inside her Rex home on Monday, October 10. Metro Atlanta hospitals have seen a surge in deliveries this month, a baby bump that one Georgia demographer attributes to the January ice storm.

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Vino Wong, vwong@ajc.com Drivers abandoned their vehicles along Dawson Boulevard in Norcross on Jan. 11, 2011 after snow and ice made driving the road too dangerous.

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A thin layer of snow-capped ice blanketed their Clayton County neighborhood while shutting down most of metro Atlanta.

But subzero temperatures didn’t ice their love life.

Nine months later, on 
Oct. 2, Felicia gave birth to William Isaiah Quarles.

Felicia Quarles, who works as a radiology technician at Emory University Hospital, said she didn’t give much thought about the date of her conception until she heard people at Emory University Hospital Midtown buzzing about an uptick in babies born there — exactly nine months after the big ice storm.

“And that’s when it hit me and I was like, yes, that’s when it probably happened,” Quarles said. “I guess you could say it’s Mother Nature.”

Major hospitals — Northside, Piedmont Hospital and Emory University Hospital Midtown are all reporting baby bumps. At Emory Midtown, numbers of births dipped in September, and then shot up in early October. From Oct. 2 to Oct. 5, 41 babies were delivered at the hospital compared to 32 during that same period last year.

At Piedmont, doctors predict they’ll deliver 360 babies this month, as compared to the 280-300 they typically do in October.

Dr. Genevieve Fairbrother, chief of staff at Northside Hospital, noticed a jump of newly expecting mothers in March, six weeks after the storm. But while the hospital has witnessed several peak days in recent weeks, the fall months are historically a busy time for the hospital — “ice storm or no ice storm,” according to Katherine Watson, spokeswoman for Northside Hospital.

Doctors at all three hospitals were reluctant to draw too many conclusions about the delivery surge.

But the cause-and-effect seems obvious to University of Georgia demographer Doug Bachtel, who said the paralyzing and long-lasting ice storm made for particularly good conditions for romance.

Some couples were not only iced in but also without electricity. The ice storm also lasted several days, offering many opportunities for the right mood to strike.

In demographer-speak, time plus opportunity equals baby.

“When the electricity goes out and you get iced in, boredom sets in. So you think, there’s nothing to do. One thing leads to another and nine months later, you see an increase in the birth rate,” Bachtel said. “Despite living in a technologically oriented world, we still live in the natural world.”

Bachtel also said with as many as a third of pregnancies among married people unplanned, circumstances — such as a huge ice storm — can be tied to surprises.

“There are quite a few people on this earth because of natural disasters, snowstorms and the lights going out,” Bachtel said.

Reports of baby booms after blizzards, earthquakes, even strikes by football players are common. Yet, Snopes.com, a myth-busting website, says early reports of baby bumps typically prove to be nothing more than natural fluctuations in the birth rate.

As an example, Snopes pointed to the Great Blackout of 1965 in New York City. While initial reports pointed to a dramatic jump in the number of births after the blackout, later analyses showed the birth rate during that period to be well within the norm.

Dr. Mary Dolan, an ob-gyn at Emory Midtown, said biological reasons make this time of year ripe for having babies. She said shorter days of the year during the winter are associated with increased fecundity. The ice storm was like a little bonus, she said.

“You have more of a chance [of getting pregnant] because of increased fecundity and if you have more exposure to your partner during the ice storm, that will add up,” she said. “Maybe when there’s an ice storm and people run out for milk and bread, they should get condoms, too.”