Canada’s New Year’s babies

The first Canadian babies born in 2012 made local and national headlines this Sunday.

Grace Olivia Ketcheson was perhaps the most remarkable birth story. The premature infant, weighing in at just 4 pounds and 8 ounces, was the first baby born in Medicine Hat, Alberta, in 2012. Last New Year's, her brother, Jack, was celebrated as the first baby born in Regina.

"I don't know if I'd call it lucky, but that's the way the cookie crumbles I guess," mother Bobbi Jo Ketcheson told Sun Media.

"My poor kids have to share a birthday now."

In Montreal, two little boys are claiming the title as first-born of the year, with only a second between their births. Tyler Stephen Wilson was born at the Royal Victoria Hospital of the McGill University Health Centre at midnight — and a quarter of a second. At Maisonneuve Rosemont Hospital, nurses argue that midnight-born baby José Palacio Zapata was likely the first to arrive.

Edmonton's New Year's baby was born two weeks early. Alyza Venice's early arrival — at four minutes after minute — caught her parents by surprise.

"It's pretty awesome, I mean, we didn't expect to have a New Year's baby," Alyza's mother, Zendell, told Global News.

Toronto's first of the year was born 40 seconds after midnight at Scarborough Hospital's general campus. Mother Li Zhang named her healthy little boy Ming Shui.

"Ming means bright. We hope our son will have a bright future ahead of him," Zhang told The Toronto Star. "And shui stands for water."

Winnipeg's first baby of the year was a soon-to-be Nunavut resident. Noah Nicholas Nehemiah Ishalook was born at 12:09. His mother, Anne Rose Aulatjut, had travelled to Winnipeg three weeks earlier in anticipation of his birth. The happy family will return north shortly.

Kostya Sorokotiaguine was Saskatoon's New Year's baby.

"He's our special dude," Kostya's mother, Faira Dunkley, told The Star Phoenix.

And Fredericton-born Tucker Anthony Harpell beat out a Moncton baby by just 13 minutes for the title of New Brunswick's first baby of the year. The New Brunswick Medical Society presented little Tucker's parents with a car seat, a tradition that "aims to create awareness about the important and proper use of child restraints," The Daily Gleaner reports.

Happy New Year! And welcome to the planet, little ones.