New Year's Day surprise gives couple reason to celebrate

Victoria (Canada) -- For the briefest of moments, newborn Jason Nana Kwaku Maison opened his eyes and peered into 2003. Then just as quickly, the eyes were squinted shut again, the Victoria area's newest resident seeming to be in no hurry to get the new year started.

Jason has earned himself the title of New Year's baby, born to parents Beatrice Esses and John Maison at 6:57 a.m. Wednesday. The new family opened their room in the Victoria General Hospital to the media later in the afternoon, the tiny youngster sleeping through most of the action, save the occasional wiggle.

"It's nice to enter the new year with a new sweetheart," Esses said. "We weren't expecting him so soon."

In fact, they were given a due date of Jan. 9. But at a healthy eight pounds, eight ounces and nearly 20 inches long, Jason, the couple's first child, seemed ready to give his parents a memorable start to 2003.

Both are students at Camosun College -- Esses, 21, is taking business administration and Maison, 22, is taking university preparation courses.

The pair met in Victoria and have been together for just over a year. But they're both originally from Ghana in West Africa, coming to Canada separately for school. On Wednesday, the hospital room with busy with a ringing phone from family there, anxious to plan a trip to Victoria to see the newest relative.

With only two other women in labour at the hospital, Jason had a solid lock on the new baby title.

But just next door, another bundle made an appearance just 18 minutes before midnight. The as-yet unnamed boy, born to parents Maria and Jeff Hilton of Deep Cove, was the last baby born in Victoria in 2002. Hilton, clutching the pink-cheeked child, said missing the distinction of having the first baby of the new year no big deal.

"It was a pretty ferocious labour," she said, adding the birth took only about four hours.

And just around the time baby Hilton was born, Esses was beginning her labour.

"It was an experience I'll never forget," Maison said, adding that his appreciation for women has been heightened.

Jason's middle name is just as distinctive as his New Year's title and is a nod to his Ghanian heritage, with Nana meaning chief and Kwaku meaning Wednesday, for the day he was born.

After they settle in with the new baby, both are planning to go back to school and hope to head to university in Ontario in the future.