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Many people begin the new year with glasses of Champagne, but some Chicago-area parents started the first hours of 2024 with the birth of a child.
Basya and Ezra Moskowitz welcomed their new baby, a boy weighing 7 pounds and 2 ounces, just after midnight Monday. He was among the first children born in local hospitals in 2024, and possibly the very first.
The Chicago couple’s son was born at 12:25 a.m. at Endeavor Health Evanston Hospital. The boy — who won’t be named until a Jewish circumcision ceremony is held when he is 8 days old — has two brothers ages 10 and 12, and three sisters between the ages of 2 and 8.
“They are all very excited and were hoping for a boy to even things out,” Basya Moskowitz told the Tribune as her newborn cried softly.
Moskowitz went to the hospital in the early evening and gave birth several hours later. She was surprised to have what could be Chicagoland’s first baby of 2024, but as a six-time mom she wasn’t surprised that her labor went so easily.
“My labors tend to go that way,” she said.
Chicago-area delivery rooms were busy in the hour after Moskowitz gave birth, with at least five babies born, including twins.
Naperville residents Elizabeth and Ken Madsen welcomed their new daughter, Kennedi James Madsen, at Endeavor Health Edward Hospital in Naperville. She was born at 12:32 a.m. and weighed just over 8 pounds.
At 12:46 a.m. Daniela and Andrei Smahon of Elmhurst had a baby girl weighing a little more than 5 pounds at Endeavor Health Elmhurst Hospital, and 13 minutes later her twin brother, also just over 5 pounds, was born. The couple has not yet chosen names.
Doctors and nurses at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn helped deliver a baby at 1:14 a.m., the hospital’s first of the year, but the parents did not want to share their names with the media.
At 12:39 a.m., Elise Grace García was born at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. It’s the first baby for Chicago resident Monsserrat García, originally from Aguascalientes, Mexico.
The 6.6-pound girl was originally due on Christmas Eve, but García didn’t go into labor until Sunday morning. She was attending church services in the Lawndale neighborhood with new father Jaime García when their plans for a big New Year’s Eve dinner were disrupted.
“The contractions started when we were at church, so we went straight from church to the hospital,” said the girl’s mother, speaking in Spanish through a translator. “It’s a real blessing that a new life came on New Year’s Day.”