New Katrina Moms Face Challenges
Homeless And Without Jobs, New Mothers Face Extra Stresses
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Play CBS Video Video Katrina's Displaced Students Thousands of Louisiana students are being relocated to new schools, as teachers try to east the difficult transition. Lee Cowan reports.
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Video City Reopening Suspended With news of another storm potentially heading towards New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin slows ambitious plan to reopen the city. Sharyn Alfonsi reports.
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Video Katrina's Heroes While FEMA's response was sluggish, the Coast Guard made immediate helicopter rescues in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath. Bob Orr reports.
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Shelter volunteer Jenny Crawford feeds Dwayne Ward Saturday in Baton Rouge, La. Dwayne and his twin brother Dwight III were born while being evacuated from the Superdome following the storm. (AP)
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Hurricane Katrina evacuee Angela Davis cradles her newborn son Taji, att a special church shelter in Baton Rouge, La. (AP)
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Interactive Hurricane Katrina Katrina's historic and deadly assault on the Gulf Coast: photo essays, how to help information, state-by-state damage and more.
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News Tools How To Help Organizations you may contact to give aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
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Interactive Katrina's Cost Here's a state-by-state look at the big storm's calamitous wake.
Workers at the hospital were thrust into the maelstrom even as Katrina was battering New Orleans. Helicopters and ambulances began ferrying in babies and expectant mothers, some in early labor.
"We had huge military helicopters coming in one after another," says Susan Eaton, a social worker at Women's Hospital, where about 300 Katrina evacuees have given birth. "It really did feel like we were in a war zone."
It became immediately apparent that something had to be done for women once they could leave the hospital but had no place to go, no money, and no family to pick them up.
"We didn't want to stick them with brand-newborn babies in shelters with thousands of people," says Cheri Johnson, of Baton Rouge General Medical Center-Bluebonnet. "There's no good access to running water. It's a breeding ground for germs."
Social workers began making calls, and several churches responded quickly.
University Presbyterian Church welcomed several women, including Angela Davis, who was eager to have a private room with her baby son, Taji, after leaving a giant city shelter she had stayed at with her grandparents.
"You can't give a baby a bath with a thousand people running in and out," she says.
A computer-savvy volunteer also helped a tearful Davis locate two other sons — 2 and 3 — who lived with their father and appeared to be missing right after the storm.
St. Luke's Episcopal Church transformed its parish hall into a dormitory for new and expectant mothers and their families. One man arrived after hitchhiking from New Orleans with his two children so he could join his wife, mother of a new 1-pound, 4-ounce baby.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
