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NYC's First Baby of 2024 Has a Lot in Common With His Dad

Boy born in Brooklyn delivered by same doctor who delivered dad, tended to by dad's pediatric nurse
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 2, 2024 10:05 AM CST
NYC's First Baby of 2024 Arrives With a Couple of Twists
The happy dad and his new son.   (NYC Health Hospitals)

A young man from Brooklyn became a dad for the first time on New Year's Day—and because his son was born just as midnight struck on New Year's Eve, the little guy now has the distinction of being New York City's first baby of 2024, reports WABC. Per a release from NYC Health + Hospitals, the as-of-yet unnamed baby boy was born in Coney Island at the hospital system's South Brooklyn Health location, entering the world at 21 inches and 7 pounds, 12.5 ounces.

The newborn is the first child for Flatbush's Rafael Abitbul and his partner, and his birth earned the Brooklyn hospital its fifth-in-a-row "first baby of the new year" honors. But there's a twist to this story: Dr. Sherman Dunn, the doctor who delivered Abitbul's son, also delivered Abitbul himself when he was born at the same facility—then called Coney Island Hospital—23 years ago, per the New York Daily News.

"He told me that his mother told him that I delivered him," Dunn tells the paper, adding that "even though [Abitbul's] mother was here, she never approached me." But that wasn't the only coincidence Baby Abitbul's family discovered: It turns out that one of the nurses tending to the infant and his family in the hospital has worked for Abitbul's own pediatrician. "I took care of him and his siblings for about 20 years," Anna Kolodynski says of the happy new dad. "Now I am taking care of his child."

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Dunn said the 2024 baby was born amid much excitement as New Year's Eve transitioned to New Year's Day. "We had the TV on with the Times Square ball on, so everybody's watching the ball coming down," he tells the Daily News. "They were doing the countdown on the TV as well as the mother pushing, too." Then, right as the clock struck 12, "the mother gave it all her might, and the baby's head delivered," Dunn notes. "It was a lot of fun," an attending resident says. (More birth stories.)

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