Zachary Breaux was located in a Fort Worth hospital Wednesday. He had been separated from his parents after Hurricane Katrina.
Evacuated couple reunited with lost baby
Associated Press
FORT WORTH, Texas -- Imagine fleeing a hurricane and leaving your newborn baby behind in a hospital.
That’s what Lainie and Tad Breaux did. As Katrina moved in on New Orleans, they agonized over what to do about their 4-day-old son, Zachary, who was in the hospital there. They couldn’t quickly buy the monitor and medicine he needed for a breathing problem before they had to get on the road.
Zachary Breaux was located in a Fort Worth hospital Wednesday. He had been separated from his parents after Hurricane Katrina.
So with assurances from Methodist Hospital, they packed up the car with two suitcases, their 5-year-old son Benjamin, their cat and dog and left early Sunday for what would be a 12-hour trip to a Houston hotel.
“When we got on the highway, I kind of lost it,” said Lainie Breaux, 39, a former social worker. “You see the rows and rows of cars, and I thought, ‘Maybe we should just turn around.”’
Nurses called them a few times Sunday and Monday, assuring them that Zachary was fine. But after the storm hit, no calls were going into or out of New Orleans, and cell phones weren’t working much either.
On Tuesday, the Breauxes got a call from San Diego. It was the sister of one of the nurses, passing along a message that Zachary was doing well.
But that was all they heard for two days, as desperate scenes from New Orleans unfolded on TV. As they learned of hospitals evacuating patients, panic started to set in.
The Breauxes and friends and family started calling hospitals in five states, trying to find out whether Zachary had been transferred.
Finally, on Thursday afternoon, a phone call made by “Tad’s aunt’s boyfriend’s brother’s wife’s sister” to Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth proved tantalizing. Inquiring about little Zachary, the caller was told that no information could be given unless a parent called. Tad Breaux called the hospital.
Once he was told his son was there, he asked question after question.
“I just kept wanting to make sure this is my boy,” he said.
They flew to Fort Worth with Benjamin Thursday night. When they first saw Zachary, he was asleep.
“It was so good to hold him. He smelled so good,” an exhausted Lainie Breaux said Friday, watching her husband cradle their sleeping son and kiss his soft black hair.
The family plan to leave in a day or so, returning to the Houston hotel where some relatives and friends are staying. Zachary has been doing fine and has had no health problems.
Next, the Breauxes must choose where to live. Their house is flooded with at least 10 feet of water.
“Everybody we know is going to have to set up another life,” said Tad Breaux, a custom home builder. “But we have Zachary now, so we’ll be fine.”