Ariana heralds the dawn of a New Year
Mothers express joy delivering the first babies of 2022
Published:Sunday | January 2, 2022 | 12:12 AMAsha Wilks - Sunday Gleaner Writer
Just four minutes after many Jamaicans would have popped the champagne, raising wine glasses to toast to a new year, 18-year-old Celena Cunningham gave birth to the first baby of 2022 at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital in downtown Kingston.
Successfully battling through the pains of child labour, Cunningham birthed a 3.16-kilogram baby girl named Ariana Gordon at 12:04 a.m. on New Year’s Day.
Baby Ariana is Cunningham’s first child and despite her initial fears and anxieties about child labour, as her friends and family members expressed how painful the child-birthing process could be, Cunningham told The Sunday Gleaner that she is grateful that she experienced no complications throughout the process.
“I did it and I faced it and I went through it by myself, and I thank God for that. I am feeling very happy and I am grateful that I had a safe delivery and that my baby is okay,” she said of baby Ariana, who has already taken a liking to sucking her index and middle fingers as she sleeps.
Like a whisper from the heavens, baby Ariana’s name just echoed in the mind of her father, Cunningham told The Sunday Gleaner. She explained that her baby’s father was at work one day when the name just “came to him” and he then gave that name his baby girl.
“It just fly in his head and he said okay, I am going to name her Ariana,” she said.
Although mothering such a fragile human being won’t be an easy task for Cunningham, she has resolved to put away her “childish ways” to take care of her baby.
“The things that I usually do, I know that they are going to have to stop because I am a mother and my daughter is going to expect better from me,” she said.
“So all that I was doing before, I have to cut it out. The childish behaviour that I usually have, I have to cut it out and know that it is time for me to ‘mother up’ and take care of my baby.”
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE
Unlike Cunningham, 23-year-old Amoy Brown is no stranger to the task of motherhood.
As a second-time mom, with a four-year-old daughter at home, Brown has a little more experience in taking care of babies.
But birthing her baby at 12:45 a.m. New Year’s Day, Brown anticipates that the experience of raising her first boy child will take her on a roller-coaster ride.
Brown acknowledges that rearing boys can be difficult because their character traits differ from that of girls, and that they are more likely to “cause trouble”, but she is still nonetheless gearing up to care for 2.24-kilogram Ajaunie Bennett.
“I just have to try to take care of him the best way and be a good mother to him,” she told The Sunday Gleaner, giving God thanks for the life of her bright-eyed baby boy and for sparing her from experiencing any childbirth complications.
That in itself is also a blessing, she said.
The second baby delivered at VJH yesterday was a girl at 12:40 a.m. through C-section; while the fourth baby, born to Janise Mae, 36, is baby boy Timir Fray, who was born at 3:45 a.m. and weighed 2.42 kilograms.
Juliet Cuthbert Flynn, the state minister for health and wellness, who handed out gift baskets to the mothers of the New Year’s babies, wished the new mothers of 2022 all the best.
Despite the fact that “this pandemic has not been kind to the entire world”, she urged new the moms to love and care for their children, citing incidences of crime and violence that had claimed the lives of some of the country’s youth.
“I think what we need more of is empathy and love, and that is what I will leave with you to carry on and make sure that they grow up to be the very best [children] that they can be,” Cuthbert Flynn said.