First babies of 2008 from Queens - naturally

Every year, hospital staffs all over the city vie to deliver the first baby of the New Year. On Tuesday, January 1, 2008’s first New Yorkers were both from Queens, naturally.
Eight-pound, four-ounce Kamiyah Alina Barrow was delivered by natural means at the stroke of midnight at New York Hospital Queens in Flushing. Moments later, eight-pound, 12-ounce Isabella Sophia Sears joined the party in a delivery room at Elmhurst Medical Center, a few miles away.
Kamiyah’s mom, Kamille Lord, and dad Dexter Barrow weren’t expecting all the notoriety when they arrived at the hospital around 11 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. “She had her plans and she came out at 12 a.m. on the dot,” Lord reportedly said.
The healthy, 21-inch-long baby girl is the Laurelton couple’s first. They’ve been together for eight years.
Meanwhile in Elmhurst, things weren’t quite as “quick and easy” for 37-year-old Yvonne Daza and her husband, Stuart Sears. She had reportedly come in at 3 p.m. for a “routine exam,” and went into labor about 4 p.m.
Though the staff was excited to be delivering a New Year’s baby, Daza said, “I was in a lot of pain - I stopped looking at the clock around 9 p.m.”
Daza got lots of support from mother-in-law, City Councilmember Helen Sears, who chairs the committee on Women’s Issues.
“It was just such a beautiful, peaceful moment,” Sears told The Queens Courier, speaking of the instant when Isabella made her entry into the New Year and the Sears family. “The miracle of birth is so special that everything else just gets out of your head,” she said.
At 25-inches and with a full head of red hair, the latest Sears was delivered naturally, at 12:01 a.m., according to hospital records.
Elmhurst Medical Center has been the scene of New Year’s stroke-of-midnight births in the past according to Executive Director Christopher Constantine. “Every other year we’re in the running. Usually its 12 o’clock and some seconds,” he said.
One of the last births in Queens for 2007 also happened at New York Hospital Queens in Flushing, when local attorney and activist Grace Meng delivered her firstborn, eight-pound, six-ounce Tyler Kye at 8:41 p.m.
Meng and husband Wayne Kye said that the boy, 22-inches at delivery, is doing just fine.