Looking for - Baby boy born May, 1944, New Orleans, LA

My mother, Mary Frances Schwertner Tepera, gave birth to a baby boy in Baptist Hospital, New Orleans , La, May 1944. At the time, my father and she were told that the baby died five and a half hours after birth. They were never given a birth or death certificate. My father, Willie Frank Tepera, was stationed at Fort Plauche, New Orleans, at the time. Neither he nor my mother ever questioned the circumstances of their first child's death at the time. In the past few years, my mother has tried unsuccessfully to get records of this child's birth for her Bible. We have requested her personal hospital records and sent for birth and/or death certificates of the baby. We have had no success finding records of this child's birth. Does anyone know how we might go about finding out about this child? Baptist Hospital did have some incidences of children who were taken for adoption. We need to be able to resolve this birth issue for my mother's peace of mind. Most recently, we've been told that her files from 1944 were destroyed just this year (August 1998). These are the facts as we know them: