New York City’s first baby of 2014 is a girl born just one second after midnight on New Year’s Day at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, according to the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp.
Tenzin Choetso weighed 6 pounds, 11 ounces at birth, and she and mother Metok Dolma are both “doing well,” the HHC said Wednesday.
Dolma and father Choegyal Dorjee are originally from Tibet.
Elmhurst Executive Director Chris Constantino said hospital staffers were “overjoyed” by the timely delivery.
Last year, a baby was born at Elmhurst at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Tenzin barely beat out another girl for this year’s “first baby” title.
Shannon-Lee Willis was born at New York Methodist Hospital five seconds after midnight — “basically just as soon as they finished saying ‘Happy New Year’ on TV,” hospital spokesman Will Deitz said.
Shannon-Lee weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 19 inches at birth.
Parents Samantha Nieves and Shannon Willis had planned to attend a New Year’s Eve service at The Brooklyn Tabernacle church but went to the hospital instead after Nieves, who was two days past her delivery date, went into labor around 9 p.m.
The hospital sent the couple home because Nieves wasn’t dilated enough and her contractions will still far apart, but her labor intensified as soon as they got to their Crown Heights apartment and they took an ambulance back to the emergency room.
“She’s going to have a crazy life,” Nieves, 27, said of Shannon-Lee.
“She’s going to have a party on New Year’s at the drop of the ball.”
Willis, 26, said he had a premonition about the delivery during a dream on the night of his daughter’s due date.
“I asked her, ‘When you coming to see Daddy?’ And she was like, ‘Daddy, I’m going to be here New Year’s,'” he said.
“It was all amazing to me. Three pushes and she came right out.”
Another runner-up is Janelle Merlos, who was born at 12:10 a.m. at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.
Mother Sharon Cuestas — who also has another daughter, Janelle, 2 — said she was due to deliver Dec. 26, and worried that she wouldn’t make it to the emergency room after going into labor.
“Walking out of the house was a little painful because my water broke at home. The contractions were coming fast,” she said.
“I was like ‘Oh, what happens if I pop her out in the cab?’ Even though I was a couple minutes away from the hospital, I was nervous.”
“It was an experience I will never forget. Definitely,” she added.