Hurricane Milton: Baby born during massive storm is a ‘miracle’, says mother
A woman has given birth to a “miracle baby” during Hurricane Milton after making a perilous journey to hospital while in labour.
Kenzie Lewellen, who was 39 weeks pregnant, witnessed the devastation from her hospital window, with a tree being ripped out of the ground as the massive storm pounded Florida earlier this week.
She also needed a caesarean section as the baby boy was in the wrong position. “I was very scared,” the first-time mother said.
Follow live: Man saved clinging to cool box
Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm at about 8.30pm local time on Wednesday (1.30am UK time on Thursday), causing massive flooding and leaving millions of people without power.
At least 16 people have been confirmed dead in Florida in the hurricane’s aftermath, including at least five due to tornadoes in St Lucie County.
Ms Lewellen’s labour began at home in Port Charlotte at 4am on Wednesday, Sky’s US partner network NBC News reports.
At that time, the storm had not yet hit the state but Ms Lewellen and her boyfriend Dewey Bennett’s house already started taking in water before her contractions began.
“My mind was just running a million miles an hour, like, what am I going to do?” the 22-year-old woman said. “I was very nervous.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Florida before and after Hurricane Milton
Then, after she had been in labour for more than four hours at home, the couple started making their way 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,” Ms Lewellen said.
“There was not really many people on the roads, because it was so windy outside and it was raining quite a bit.”
Dewey Bennett with his son Dewey Lester Bennett IV. Pic: Kenzie Lewellen
The couple were even more on edge during the medical emergency as Mr Bennett’s father, also named Dewey, had died when Hurricane Irma slammed into Florida in 2017.
“My dad had a massive heart attack because the ambulance could not come out to us during the storm,” the 24-year-old said.
“I just didn’t want to go through what I had to go through with the last hurricane back in 2017,” added Mr Bennett.
Watching a tree uproot during labour
When the trio arrived at hospital, only one person could be with her. So, Ms 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”.
Kenzie Lewellen and Dewey Bennett. Pic: Kenzie Lewellen
She then went through labour in a room with a window view of the destruction as the storm struck the area.
“I was telling him [Mr Bennett], I’m like, ‘Oh, that tree looks like it’s going to fly out of the ground!’ when I was labouring, because we were just watching the storm and the wind and the rain go crazy. It was definitely intense out there,” she said.
“And it actually did uproot,” added, Mr Bennett, the baby’s father.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Florida escapes worst of hurricane
Unplanned C-section
After being in labour for hours, Ms Lewellen was given some distressing news. The baby was in the wrong position, and she would need an unplanned C-section.
“I had so much going through my head at that point, a storm and my family,” she said.
Problems with the epidural left her in extreme pain for hours until she was given anaesthesia.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
“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.
Read more:
After Hurricane Milton the storm of US politics is just getting going
Will there be more Atlantic hurricanes in 2024?
Dewey Lester Bennett IV was safely delivered at 11.45pm, weighing 8lbs.
“He is a miracle baby,” Ms Lewellen said.
In a statement, the chief executive of Sarasota Memorial Health Care System David Verinder 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 Dewey, six other babies were born at the two Sarasota Memorial hospitals during Milton, Mr Verinder said.
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to open a migrant detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.
Speaking before making the act official, Mr Trump said that thousands of migrants who cannot be deported to their home countries will be held at the complex, on the island of Cuba.
“I’m also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” he said.
Follow latest: White House U-turns on funding pause
“Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back.”
It comes as Mr Trump’s controversial pick for health secretary – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – faced a hearing committee where he was grilled on his views, including on vaccines and abortion.
At its peak, about 680 people were held at the American-run prison in Cuba. File pic: AP
Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002 by then president George W. Bush to hold detainees in the wake of 9/11 and the War on Terror.
Only 15 prisoners – including Ramzi bin al Shibh, accused of being a 9/11 co-conspirator – remain at the detention centre.
At its peak, about 680 people, most suspected of terrorism and being “illegal enemy combatants”, were held at the American-run prison in Cuba.
The facility has been criticised by human rights groups and legal campaigners over potential breaches of international laws and conditions.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel deemed the decision as “an act of brutality” in a message on his X account, and he described the base as one “located in illegally occupied Cuba territory”.
In response to Mr Trump’s announcement, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci – who briefly served under the previous Trump administration – said: “Also known as a concentration camp.
“Yet no dissent. No courageous political leader willing to stand up to this.”
Read more from Sky News:
Chicago’s streets empty over Trump’s immigration crackdown
Trump offers federal employees eight months’ pay to quit
RFK Jr faces Senate hearing
Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Kennedy – the president’s pick to be health secretary – faced a grilling over his views on vaccines, abortion and Medicaid at a Senate confirmation hearing.
Appearing at the Capitol, Democratic senators raised some of the 71-year-old’s previous remarks comparing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to Nazi death camps, linking school shootings to antidepressants, and his claim that “no vaccine is safe and effective”.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr was grilled on vaccines, abortion and Medicaid at his confirmation hearing. Pic: AP
One senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, told Mr Kennedy “frankly, you frighten people” when discussing an outbreak of measles in Rhode Island – its first since 2013.
Read more:
Who is the man set to become Trump’s health chief?
The nominee said he did “not have a broad proposal for dismantling” Medicaid – a state and federal taxpayer-funded healthcare programme – and dismissed claims he was anti-vaccine by saying his children were vaccinated.
Mr Kennedy – the son of Robert F Kennedy and nephew of former US president John F Kennedy – was also questioned on his previous support for abortion and was shown statements as recent as from when he was running for president as an independent.
He said he now agrees with the president that “every abortion is a tragedy”.
Federal funding pause memo rescinded
It also comes after Mr Trump’s budget office rescinded an order freezing spending on federal grants – less than two days after it sparked legal challenges across the US.
The order on Monday sparked uncertainty over a financial lifeline for states, schools and organisations that rely on trillions of dollars from Washington.
However, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Sky’s US partner network NBC that the freeze itself has not been withdrawn and that it was simply a cancellation of the memo ordering it.
Lord Mandelson says calling Donald Trump a “danger to the world” in 2019 was “ill-judged and wrong”.
The former Labour minister has been named as the next UK ambassador to the US, although there have been questions about whether President Trump will accept him.
Speaking to Fox News, Lord Mandelson walked back his criticisms from the president’s first term in office.
Politics latest: Government announces growth plans
The 71-year-old told the conservative-backing US TV channel: “I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong.
“I think times and attitudes towards the president have changed since then.
“I think people have been impressed, not just by the extraordinary second mandate that he has received from the American people, but the dynamism and energy with which he approached not just the campaign but government as well.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Could Trump stop the new UK ambassador?
Many Labour figures, including the now Foreign Secretary David Lammy, criticised Mr Trump before, during and after his first term in the White House.
Now they are in government and Mr Trump is back in power in Washington DC, language has become more diplomatic.
Read more:
No one is safe in Trumpland
Trump aide calls Mandelson a ‘moron’
Lord Mandelson told the Alain Elkann Interviews podcast previously: “What Donald Trump represents and believes is an anathema to mainstream British opinion.”
He added: “Even those who have a sneaking admiration for Donald Trump because of his personality, nonetheless regard him as reckless, and a danger to the world.”
The likely new ambassador criticised Mr Trump’s attitude to a previous holder of that office, and said the president was “little short of a white nationalist and a racist”.
👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈
Speaking now, Lord Mandelson praised Mr Trump, saying he was a “nice” and “fair-minded person” who could become “one of the most consequential American presidents I have known in my adult life”.
He added: “I think that with the approach he is taking to government, which frankly just seems to us in Britain so much more organised, it’s so much more coherent, he seems to be so much more clear in what he wants to do, we take encouragement from that, that gives us greater confidence.”
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports10 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway