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Claudia Ceja welcomed her daughter, Emiliana Lopez, at 7:04 a.m. Tuesday inside Phelps Memorial Hospital, the hospital’s first baby of the year. Emiliana weighed 5 pounds, 11 ounces, and measured 18 ½ inches long.
Ceja said her daughter wasn’t due until Jan. 13 but arrived 12 days early, just in time to become the third baby born in Westchester in the new year.
“She wanted to make a grand appearance,” the proud mother said.
Ceja said she started to feel contractions Monday evening as she got ready to go to dinner at her mother’s house. While there, Ceja said she didn’t feel well and decided to go home.
By 5 a.m. Ceja had arrived at Phelps Memorial and just two hours later, she was holding her baby daughter. As she looked down at Emiliana, her first child, wrapped tightly in a white blanket, with a pink hat on her head, Ceja said it was a surreal moment.
“It’s so overwhelming,” she said. “But we’re overjoyed. It’s a great way to start the new year.”
Down the hall, Praveen Umashamkar and Deepthi Narasipura were welcoming a baby girl of their own. The Elmsford couple became proud parents at 7:51 a.m., four days sooner than expected.
“We didn’t expect to be here on New Year’s but today she was here,” Narasipura said.
The baby girl, whose parents are still deciding on a name, weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces and measure 19 ¾ inches long.
Elsewhere, at least five babies were born in 2013 in Westchester as of Tuesday afternoon. The first, Ella Chang, was born at 12:20 a.m. at Lawrence Hospital Center in Bronxville.
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