It didn’t take long for Croatia to add to its population in Split this morning.
A 38-year woman from Split gave birth to the first baby born in Split in the new year, just one minute after midnight. In contrast to several previous years, this time the first baby born at the maternity ward in Split was a boy, weighting 3.466 kilograms. He is the first child in the family and was born by a caesarean section. Both the mother and the child are feeling great and are already spending their first moments together. The second child born at the Split maternity ward in the new year is also a boy. His mother gave birth at 7.10 am this morning, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on January 1, 2016.
The first-born boy and his mother were visited in the morning by Luka Brčić, Deputy Prefect of the Split-Dalmatia County, while the Mayor of Split Ivo Baldasar has sent gifts on behalf of the City. He did not personally visit the mother and the child due to health reasons. Unofficial sources say that the mayor has caught a virus, so he did not want to expose them to potential health hazards.
However, the baby boy born in Split was not the first baby born in Croatia in the new year. That honour went to Leana Šikić, a baby girl born in Rijeka just 10 seconds after midnight. Her parents are Evelyn and Saša from Rukavac in Gorski Kotar region. Leana is the second child of the family and already has an older brother. The contractions started at 9.30 pm, which means that everything went quickly and without any problems.
“Every year, I visit the maternity ward, but I have never found so much happiness and such a joyful atmosphere like this year”, said the Mayor of Rijeka, who every year visits the first-born child in his city. He went there at about 1 am and gave to little Leana a silver coin of St. Vitus, the patron saint of Rijeka.
The first boy in Rijeka was born at about 9 am, while at 6.05 am another baby girl was born, whose mother came to Rijeka with a special ambulance transport from the island of Cres.
