Melanie Murillo born at 3:30 a.m. Jan. 1.
By: Emily Craighead
Melissa Nunez was allotted 12 wishes according to the Latin American tradition of eating a grape for each stroke of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
But the 23-year-old expectant mother remembers making only one wish that night for her first child to be born as soon as possible.
The baby wasn’t due until a week later, but 10 minutes after midnight, Ms. Nunez’s contractions started and she knew her wish would come true.
At 3:30 a.m. Saturday, Ms. Nunez and her husband, Marco Murillo, were on their way to Somerset Medical Center, and at 9:38 a.m. they were the proud parents of Melanie Murillo, the medical center’s first baby of 2005.
"I was waiting for her for a long time," Ms. Nunez said, cradling the sleeping Melanie as she sat in the living room of her Griggs Place home Tuesday evening.
Melanie, who weighed in at 6 pounds, 6 ¾ ounces and measured 19 ½ inches long when she was born, immediately became a celebrity in the medical center’s Baby Suites, as nurses stopped by to greet the first baby of the new year. The nurses also borrowed Melanie to show other new mothers how to bathe their infants.
"I think she’s been blessed since day one," Mr. Murillo said, recalling the generosity of friends and family at the baby shower, and the number of well-wishers who had already come to the hospital or stopped by their house to congratulate the young parents.
Some came all the way from Costa Rica, where Mr. Murillo and his wife were born.
Ms. Nunez and Mr. Murillo, 25, who were married Dec. 18, come from large families and have spent a lot of time around children, but caring for Melanie is an entirely new experience.
"It’s not the same. You have to stay with her all day," Ms. Nunez said. "I can’t even go to the bathroom without somebody watching her."
But Melanie, who at her young age spends most of the time sleeping, occasionally frowning or smiling and making gurgling noises, is far from being a burden.
"You can’t even know how good it is until…you can love your cousins and your nieces, but it’s different," Ms. Nunez said.
The best advice Mr. Murillo said he received so far, is to "to love her like there’s nothing else in the world."
With that in mind, Ms. Nunez doesn’t mind so much that Melanie has taken her place as the apple of her grandfather’s eye.