New Year's Day

First Bay Area Baby of 2019 Apparently Born in Fairfield

The Bay Area's first baby of 2019 is apparently a girl born at NorthBay Medical Center in Fairfield.

The healthy girl was born at 12:25 a.m. Tuesday to Elesha Matte and Kamehameha Quitugua of Fairfield, according to Lanette Matte, Elesha's sister, also a Fairfield resident.

"This is (Elesha's) 10th child, but this pregnancy was a little harder," said Lanette, noting that Elesha's labor was induced starting about 11 a.m. Monday.

"This little girl was saying she wanted to come out on her time. I guess she really wanted to be a New Year's Baby."

As for mom, "She's doing good, she's happy," Lanette said.

There was a relative dearth of babies born early on Jan. 1, 2019. A phone survey of more than 35 Bay Area hospitals turned up, before 1:30 a.m., only the NorthBay Medical Center birth and another at 12:51 a.m. at Natividad Medical Center in Monterey. Representatives of a few hospitals either declined comment or couldn't be reached early Tuesday morning.

"We haven't had any babies at our hospitals" as of 2:15 a.m. Tuesday, "and I don't remember this happening before on New Year's," said Dean Fryer, communications manager with Sutter Health, which operates several Bay Area hospitals, including Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Berkeley.

Kaiser Permanente spokesman Karl Sonkin echoed that. As of 2 a.m. Tuesday, no Kaiser hospitals in the Bay Area had recorded a birth.

"This is very unusual, indeed," Sonkin said.

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