Lazaro Matias Abundes appeared on the stage of life at 12:33 a.m. Wednesday. He wasn't due until January 18, but he cut short his mom's last-minute baby shopping to become Lake County's first new citizen of 2014.
"Called the doc... he said start timing your contractions, and before you know it my husband came to pick me up and we were here and a few hours later out came Laz," said mom Laura Abundes.
The first-time mother says clock-watching wasn't a priority.
"It was right after midnight when the doc was like, 'OK, he is coming right now, so he's either a tax-break baby or a New Year's baby,'" she said.
Hospitals around the region were feverish in their reports of New Year's babies... At St. Anthony Hospital, staff sang a lullaby as Lupita Perez and Jose Cholico welcomed their little girl at 2:40 a.m. -- likely as later New Year's revelers were going strong. In DuPage County, 7 lbs., 8 oz. Joseph Mark Dempsey was born at 7:33 a.m. at Good Samaritan Hospital. Before that at Prentice Women's Hospital in Chicago, Alexander Hokan Lazroff, weighing a solid 9 lbs. and measuring 22 inches long, arrived at 12:23 a.m.
But for Cook County, the title of first baby born goes to Chicago's Luis Marquez Jr., who came into the world at Resurrection Hospital, joining his big sisters at one minute past midnight.
"I wasn't trying for the New Year's baby!" said mom Luz Marquez. "It's amazing because he wanted to wait until a minute after midnight to be born!"
