It was 4 a.m. ET Wednesday when Kenzie Lewellen’s labor began at her home in Port Charlotte, Florida, with Hurricane Milton hurtling toward the Gulf Coast.
Lewellen and her boyfriend, Dewey Bennett, 24, were both on edge.
“My mind was just running a million miles an hour, like, what am I going to do?” said Lewellen, 22. “I was very nervous.”
Bennett, the baby’s father, said in an interview Thursday, “I was very stressed.”
In 2017, Bennett’s own father, also named Dewey, died when Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida.
“My dad had a massive heart attack because the ambulance could not come out to us during the storm,” he said. Now, with another medical emergency on their hands, he couldn’t help but remember what happened the last time.
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The monster storm Milton made landfall at 8:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, causing massive flooding and leaving millions without power.
Milton hadn’t hit yet, but the couple’s house was already taking in water before Lewellen’s contractions began. Lewellen, a first-time mom, was 39 weeks pregnant, and the couple knew that if she “didn’t start having contractions until during the storm the roads would have been flooded and we were going to have a tough time getting” to the hospital, Bennett said.
“I just didn’t want to go through what I had to go through with the last hurricane back in 2017,” he said.
They had considered evacuating to West Palm Beach on the east coast of Florida. “I’m kind of glad we didn’t, because they ended up getting, I think, nine tornadoes before the storm had even made landfall,” Lewellen said.
“The day before, we were both calling the hospital and seeing if there was any way we can just check in,” she said. “But obviously during a storm, they don’t just let people come stay here, because they’re not a shelter.”
After Lewellen labored for 4½ hours at home, the couple began the perilous journey to Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Venice.
“My mom was driving us, and it was extremely windy, so we were trying to be as cautious as possible,” Lewellen said. “There was not really many people on the roads, because it was so windy outside and it was raining quite a bit.”
When they arrived, only one person could accompany her inside the hospital. So, Lewellen had to say goodbye to her mother.
“I was very, very upset that my mom couldn’t stay, because she is my best friend and one of my biggest supporters,” she said. But “we were able to FaceTime pretty much the entire time.”
Her distance from her mom only added to the concerns whirling in her head. “My mom and my aunt, they are extremely capable of taking care of themselves.” But, still, “I was very hopeful that everything would be OK for them,” she said.
She went through labor in a room with a window view of the devastation the hurricane unleashed as it pounded Sarasota.
Bennett was by her side.
“I was telling him, I’m like, ‘Oh, that tree looks like it’s going to fly out of the ground!’ when I was laboring, because we were just watching the storm and the wind and the rain go crazy. It was definitely intense out there last night.” she said.
“And it actually did uproot,” Bennett added.
After having been in labor for hours, Lewellen was given some distressing news: The baby was in the wrong position, and she would need a cesarean section.
“I had so much going through my head at that point, a storm and my family,” she said in an interview over Zoom Thursday.
Problems with the epidural left her in extreme pain for hours until she was given anesthesia.
“I was just on my own, by myself, and I was very scared. If I didn’t have the doctors and the nurses that I had, it would have been a whole lot worse,” she said.
In a statement Thursday, David Verinder, CEO of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, said: “We couldn’t be prouder of our team. They left their homes and many left their families to be here for our patients and community.”
Along with Kenzie and Dewey’s little boy, six other babies were born at the two Sarasota Memorial hospitals during Milton, Verinder said.
It was all worth it in the end.
At 11:45 p.m. ET, Dewey Lester Bennett, IV, was born, a healthy 8-pound boy.
Holding Dewey for the first time, Lewellen felt her world change. “It is the most indescribable feeling. He’s a part of you and also part of the person you love.”
Bennett said: “My cheeks hurt because I haven’t stopped smiling. It was great.”
Holding little Dewey in his arms also had special resonance for Bennet, given the passing of his father, Dewey’s namesake, in similar circumstances.
What will baby Dewey’s parents tell him years from now about how he came into the world?
“I’m probably going to give him a hard time for being so stubborn,” Lewellen joked. Some people have joked that his nickname should be Milton, she said.
“He is a miracle baby,” she said, holding him up as sunshine streamed through her hospital window.
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