Bodden Town couple Shannel Walker and Abraham Frederick marked their New Year’s Day with a special surprise on Sunday when their son Amir decided to come almost two weeks early, making him the first baby born for 2023 in the Cayman Islands.
He was one of three boys born on New Year’s Day at the Cayman Islands Hospital in George Town.
Walker, speaking with the Cayman Compass Wednesday in a telephone interview, said baby Amir was due on 16 Jan. and the couple was planning to schedule a C-section.
“But he had other plans, unfortunately,” she said laughing.
Frederick agreed, “I guess the good part is we get to celebrate his birthday on New Year’s.”
Baby Amir is the couple’s first son. They also have two daughters.
Walker said everything happened quickly on Sunday afternoon.
She said she put her 14-month old daughter down for a nap before doing some cleaning shortly after lunch. After she fell asleep, Walker said she went to the bathroom and discovered her waters had broken.
Immediately, the couple sprung into action and headed down to the hospital.
At 7:05pm, Walker gave birth to baby Amir, who weighed four pounds and six ounces.
No Christmas Day birthday for Xavier Emmanuel
While baby Amir came early, George Town couple Catherine and Kenval Bryan’s son, Xavier Emmanuel, came later than expected.
He was the second baby born on New Year’s Day – but the Bryans said they had been planning to welcome their child around Christmas.
Kenval Bryan said the couple and their other two sons, Draecen, 15 and Zenith, 5, were excited to welcome the newest addition to the family.
“We wanted to go natural, so we waited and waited for him to arrive. So he actually chose the first of the year, which we thought was very special, and we’re just very excited to have him… [a] happy, healthy baby boy, born nine pounds seven ounces,” Bryan said.
“From Saturday I started to have mild contractions in the evening time and they weren’t going away. They were irregular, but they kept coming. Then Sunday morning, I just started to feel them more regularly and then after lunchtime, they started to develop a pattern,” Catherine Bryan explained.
She said she tried stay home as long as possible, getting to the hospital around 5pm and delivering the child at 8:50pm.
Her two other sons, Bryan said, were also born after their due date, but she had previously elected to have labour induced.
This time, she said she was going to wait it out and opted not to use painkillers.
“I was just in that mental state,” she said, admitting, “down to the wire I was like ‘Can I do this?’ ‘Yes, I can do it’. I just kept talking to myself. My husband has a few dents and scratches in his hand but other than that, everything went good. I’m happy with how everything played out.”
Baby boy joy for first-time parents
First-time parents Tamara Radojicic and Ryan Everett welcomed their son James Eldon Everett on Sunday at 11:07pm, Cayman’s third baby of the year.
Baby James also arrived on the scene earlier than expected.
Radojicic said they were hoping he would come in January, because “[Ryan’s] birthday is January 12 and we were excited that if he arrived on his birthday, they’d be able to celebrate together,” she said.
Everett said the couple had company staying for the holidays and Radojicic started getting labour pains just before they departed for the airport. So while their guests headed to Owen Roberts International, the couple headed to the Cayman Islands Hospital.
“We kept telling him… to hold off until the company leaves and he waited just long enough for us,” Everett said.
“We were both just very excited to meet him and see what he was like… we were just pretty excited to meet him. It was definitely a long, very long, process,” Radojicic added.
Everett said it is fairly common for first time mothers to experience a lengthy delivery, but “She beared with it and she was a champ through the whole process. I think overall things went well and she stayed calm,” he added.
Radojicic said the process took so long that when they arrived at the hospital in the morning, they were told that they would have the first baby of the new year, but by the time James was born at 11:07pm, the two other baby boys had been delivered before him.
“He just got in there for January 1,” Radojicic quipped.
All three babies and their parents are doing well.
The couples expressed their gratitude to the medical staff for their support during the process.
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