My students laughed at me last fall when, after Hurricane Ike and the extended power outages that followed, I predicted an increased birth rate in the area come June and July. Today they laughed with me when I read them the following article.

Doctors who work in Houston’s busiest maternity ward say they’re expecting an especially bustling June, leading some to conclude that Hurricane Ike was the perfect storm for making babies. It’s been eight months since Ike knocked out the region’s electricity, leaving many with no television, Internet access or other distractions for days, if not weeks. Now there’s a curious bump in the number of women who are rounding out their third trimesters of pregnancy. Several obstetrical practices associated with The Woman’s Hospital of Texas are extra-busy these days with prenatal care. “I looked, somewhat in shock, at my little book of deliveries for June, and it’s 26,” said Dr. John Irwin, president of Obstetrical and Gynecological Associates. He routinely delivers 15 to 20 babies a month and called the Ike boomlet “a real phenomenon.” His colleagues in the 35-physician practice have seen a similar increase in patients who probably conceived during the powerless days after Ike. “There’s about a 25 percent increase in the number of deliveries coming up in mid-June to mid-July,” said Irwin, also chief of surgery service at Woman’s Hospital.

I don’t know why anyone would be surprised. Weather-related disasters like this one often produce such statistical anomalies, and I would not have expected Hurricane Ike to be any different. Indeed, one local OB/GYN is certain that is precisely the reason for the strange increase in babies due this summer.

Dr. Rakhi Dimino, an obstetrician/gynecologist with Houston Women’s Care Associates, is sure there’s something to this Ike baby boom. She’s due June 10. She was on call at Woman’s as the hurricane passed over, and and left around noon that Saturday. She was with her husband at home until her office reopened the following Tuesday. So what was happening at the Dimino home those two and a half days? “What everybody else in Houston was doing,” said Dimino, 33, whose baby will be her first. “You can only do so much when there’s no television, nothing open and there’s nowhere to go.”