Carmageddon Baby Boom? Cedars-Sinai Says 405 Closure Could Account for April Due-Dates
NBC LA just dropped the hottest expose of 2012 (besides maybe the "teen Twitter party" epidemic in the Hills): a possible baby boom resulting from the 405 shutdown last summer. Otherwise known as Carmageddon, or the apocalyptic traffic forecast that never happened -- instead turning L.A. into a serene, pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly urban paradise.
Carmageddon parents get festive with the nursery paint.
"Our prenatal classes are actually fuller than they often are, so it may actually be a premonition..."
"... that there might be more women delivering nine months after Carmageddon," says Dr. Sarah Kilpatrick, OB/GYN chair at Cedars-Sinai, to the news station.
Another doctor crunches numbers: If couples stayed indoors on July 16 and 17, that would make April 9 and 10 (yesterday and today) the likely due-dates for babies conceived during Carmageddon.
Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who actually gave Carmageddon its name on KNX news radio, raises an eyebrow at the theory in a sit-down office interview. Because this is obviously worthy of a sit-down office interview.
View more videos at: http://nbclosangeles.com.
"They said the same thing about the power failure back in New York City in the 1960s," he says. "Turned out to be a myth. I suspect it will turn out to be a myth here."
What a Scrooge, right? We want our Carmageddon baby boom! So we're just going with Dr. Kilpatrick's take. (And we've contacted her for more.)
But even if the baby boom is wishful thinking, this expose is worth a peek at the Souferians' nursey.
That's because their baby's door frame is painted to look like the 405 freeway. Seriously.
"We stayed home the whole weekend because we were worried, like everybody else, that we'd get stuck," says mama Souferian. So yeah, guess what they did instead. Insert sexy "stuck" pun here!
[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]
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