Baby born prematurely during Superstorm Sandy reunites with doctors

HACKENSACK, N.J. (WABC) -- A little boy in New Jersey celebrates his second birthday Wednesday on the second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy hitting.

He met the medical team who went to great lengths to deliver him on Tuesday.

"Who would have thought I would have gone into labor during Sandy," said Christine Schleppy, Liam's mother.

As in that Superstorm two years ago that turned our entire area upside down.

Well this little guy shares something in common with Sandy.

October 29th is Liam's birthday.

To mark the occasion, the family met with the team who handled this special delivery.

"I've delivered babies in parking lots of hospitals but never a premature baby at the height of a storm," said Dr. Herman Morchel, of Hackensack University Medical Center.

Christine wasn't due until mid-December.

An ambulance rushed to the couple's New Jersey home was rerouted, and then it got stuck in the mud.

They switch vehicles, but they weren't out of the woods yet.

"We finally get about a mile from the second hospital and there's a huge tree down and I saw that tree and started crying," Christine Schleppy said.

They kept going, heading to a mobile unit that's identical to an Emergency Room, it had been set up the day before.

"We had all of our advanced equipment with us, ultra sound and medicine and any other equipment we needed," Dr. Morchel said.

But then the winds picked up, the storm intensified, the team moved all of the equipment from the mobile unit into a church, now plan C.

"They go out as much as they could into the gymnasium of a church, it's a basketball court and it looks like a mash unit," said David Schleppy, Liam's father.

The couple arrived there at 9:59 and Liam was born, healthy, just before 11.

"They warmed blankets in an oven to make it warm for him, to make an actual bed warmer," Christine Schleppy said.

They wrapped the preemie in aluminum foil and sent the couple on their way, with quite a story to tell.

"It's nice to see that something nice and good and rewarding come out of the storm," David Schleppy said.