The 2024 New Year’s baby for Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops was born Jan. 1 to a family from Williams Lake.
Exhausted but happy, Irish Topdas and her husband Carlo Sescon welcomed their son King Ezekiel Sescon at 1:34 a.m. New Year’s Day. According to mom, little King is not so little, weighing in at eight pounds, 10 ounces.
“He’s really big,” said Irish, describing her son as having cute chubby cheeks and a round face.
“He looks just like my husband. I have been carrying this child for nine months and he looks just like my husband - not fair,” Irish joked Tuesday morning in an interview with the Williams Lake Tribune.
The family said they weren’t initially expecting to have their baby in Kamloops. They were told at their 37-week appointment that the maternity ward at Cariboo Memorial Hospital in Williams Lake would be closed from Dec. 27 to Jan. 2.
“I was really upset, of course,” Irish said of how they felt about not having the baby in their community.
The baby’s due date was Jan.11, however, Irish was experiencing a high-risk pregnancy and doctors decided to start inducing labour on Dec. 30. Irish travelled to Royal Inland via ambulance while her husband drove to Kamloops to be there.
Irish’s contractions settled down and the couple went to their hotel in Kamloops, before they returned to Royal Inland at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 31 to have the baby.
Irish said the couple both cried when King was finally born. Prior to his birth they had suffered a miscarriage. King also has four other siblings; Renz, 16, and Rhyza, 15, living in Williams Lake with them. Siblings Mackenzie, 10 and Maxine, 9, currently live in the Philippines, where the couple is from, but hope they can bring them to Canada, where they have lived for the last five years.
The couple moved to Williams Lake for work, where Carlo works at West Fraser and Irish is the manager of MacDonald’s.
She said she has already received congratulations from many friends and co-workers in Williams Lake and they look forward to hopefully going home Jan. 3.
For being the New Year’s baby at Royal Inland Hospital, the family received a basket of baby items as well as a new 1-in-3 car seat donated by a local family.
Interior Health is also covering all expenses relating to travelling to Kamloops for their baby’s delivery, as is typically the case when families have to travel for services usually delivered in their own communities.
Irish had nothing but good things to say about the staff and their experience at Royal Inland Hospital.
“They are really accommodating,” she said. “I’ve been taken really good care of by the nurses and all the staff here.”
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