TWO babies are delivered each day at the Warrnambool Base Hospital, but the four who arrived on Wednesday marked a one-in-a-hundred-year event.
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While some celebrated their birthday on the unique date — 12/12/12 — the cries of the four newborns marked a memorable start to their lives.
Nurse unit manager Peter Logan described the new birthdays as “bit unusual”.
Normally, two babies are delivered each day at the hospital maternity ward.
But staff were kept twice as busy on Wednesday.
“We had four born within 24 hours and that’s not an unusually busy day for us. It was spread across the 24 hours,” Mr Logan said.
“It kept us on our feet, for sure.”
About 739 babies have been delivered in the past year, with seven or eight births on the busiest days.
The number increased this year after St John of God private hospital closed its midwifery unit, boosting South West Healthcare births by about two a week.
“There’s certainly been increase over the past couple of years but we’re within our capacity here, which is about a thousand babies a year,” Mr Logan said.
Wednesday’s one-off date, wasn’t something mothers had deliberately aimed to have on their children’s birth certificate, he said.
“It just happens when it happens, it’s too hard to organise those sorts of things.
“They can organise when they get married for a particular day but it’s pretty awkward to organise a birth.”
New mothers Rebecca Smith and Regina Laird both had different dates in mind for their arrivals, but fate had other plans.
“I was supposed to be having him on the ninth,” said Ms Smith, holding one-day-old Xavier.
Ms Laird’s newborn Jensen, who was delivered via caesarian section, hadn’t been due for another week.
But the date didn’t matter for his father Tyson, who summed up his feelings about fatherhood.
“I’m over the moon,” he said.