WELCH —
April Lester had a pretty good idea about the day and time her baby was going to be born, and on New Year’s Day, she proved to be very good at guessing.
Lester, 26, of Bradshaw gave birth to her new daughter at approximately 5:14 a.m. Tuesday. Little Linda Faith weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces and was 21 inches long at birth.
“She’s going to be tall like her pawpaw,” Lester predicted as she rested in her room at Welch Community Hospital. “I just told my mom that I’d be having my baby on New Year’s Day.”
Lester said that she might have arrived at the hospital about 12:46 a.m. Tuesday. Even then, she had a good idea when her new daughter would arrive in the world.
“I can’t remember because I was in pain so bad,” she recalled. “I was looking at the clock, and I told the nurses it would be about five o’clock. I had a natural birth, no c-section, no nothing. I think it was an hour and a half, maybe two hours.”
Linda Faith’s siblings, sisters Summer, 8, Angel, 6, and brother C.J., 7, had not yet met their new sister Tuesday morning. She didn’t share a birthday with her brother or either of her sisters, but her mother knew two other people born on New Year’s Day.
“It’s my best friend, Charlene Morgan’s, birthday,” Lester said.
She also has a niece, Renae, with a New Year’s birthday. Lester was not sure if a joint birthday was going to be possible: her best friend lives nearby, but her niece lives out of state.
Lester spent Tuesday afternoon relaxing and getting to know her daughter.
“I feel great,” she said. “I was lying in the bed, but I got up and got in the chair.”
Holding the Linda Faith was easier in the chair, and the hospital bed hurt her back.
“I hate hospitals, but I’ll do it for my baby.”
In Tazewell County, Va., another New Year’s Day baby was born at 12:19 p.m. at Clinch Valley Medical Center near Richlands, Va.
Angela Asbury, 22, of Tazewell, Va.. wasn’t expecting her new son for a few more days.
“He was actually not due until the seventh. I had a c-section scheduled for next week,” she said.
Her new son, Landon Keith McClanahan, weighed 6 pounds, 6 ounces at birth. He was 19 inches long, Asbury said.
“It’s going to be a combination of birthday and New Year’s parties,” she predicted.
Landon’s father is Stanton McClanahan, and he had a brother, 17-month-old Stanton McClanahan, Jr., she said. She expects to take her new son home Friday.
Local News
Related Photos
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Staff photo by Eric DiNovo Happy birthday... April Lester, 26, of Bradshaw holds her daughter Linda Faith in the Obstetrics wing of Welch Community Hospital Tuesday. Linda Faith was the first baby born at any of the local hospitals in 2013.
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January 2, 2013
It’s a girl! First baby of 2013 born in Welch
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