EARTHQUAKE / THE LONG ROAD BACK : New Mother Grateful for Son’s Airlift Out of L.A. : Rescue: He was among five babies evacuated to O.C. UCI neonatal staff seek to reunite a newborn with her Canoga Park parents.

Cradling her 4-day-old son in her arms, Marta Rodriguez Aguilar was grateful Tuesday that her baby had been airlifted by military helicopter from a quake-ravaged hospital in the San Fernando Valley to UCI Medical Center.

“I am happy and relieved,” said the 39-year-old mother, who Tuesday morning had gone to visit her newborn at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, only to learn that little Steven had been among five babies flown to two Orange County hospitals when Northridge’s neonatal intensive care unit was evacuated because of quake damage.

Two babies went to UCI Medical Center and three to Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills.

Aguilar, who speaks only Spanish, said through her eldest son, 17-year-old Heber, that she is grateful that her youngest child is in a place where the ground no longer moves. “There (in Northridge) it is still shaking,” she said.

The baby is also lucky to have a roof over his head. The rest of the Aguilar family, including three children, were evacuated from their home in a Van Nuys apartment building Monday after the pre-dawn earthquake riddled it with cracks.

Heber said the family spent Monday night at a Red Cross evacuation center at a local elementary school. They weren’t sure where they would sleep Tuesday night, he said, but hoped they could stay a few days with some friends in Orange County so the mother could be near where Steven must stay until doctors are certain a blood disorder he was born with is under control.

UCI Medical Center officials say that although they aren’t exactly sure what they can do to help the Aguilar family, they want to be sure the infants have the essentials they need before they are released to their parents.

“I have never released a baby to a homeless mother before,” said Dr. Jack Sills, director of UCI’s neonatal intensive care unit. “This is a tragedy.”

Other parents, like Adolfo Santos of Van Nuys, said they were pleased that their babies were moved to safety, but worry about bringing them home to houses that are without electricity or heat because of power outages.

Santos said he woke at 5 a.m. Tuesday to drive his wife, Antonia, from their Van Nuys home to Saddleback to check on their son, Adolfo Jr. The couple were at Northridge Hospital when their baby was placed in a portable incubator and wheeled into a combat helicopter flown by Marines from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

“I was real nervous” when the helicopter took off, Santos said. “But everything was OK after we saw the baby at Saddleback.”

Only one of the babies airlifted to Orange County on Monday has not as yet been reunited with her parents. The UCI neonatal staff said it is enlisting the help of police to find Rosa and David Perez, the parents of a girl who was born Sunday by Cesarean section at Northridge and who is known by doctors and nurses only as “Baby Perez.”

“We tried to call them at their home in Canoga Park, but the phone just rings and rings,” said Susan Perez, a UCI nurse and no relation to the family. She said officials at the Los Angeles Unified School District, where the baby’s father works, said they have not seen him since the earthquake.

The next step, she said, is to ask police to check their home and leave a note on the door. It is possible, she added, that the mother was transferred from Northridge during the evacuation to another hospital.