Midnight Arrival Helps New Twins Span Two Decades

Beaming a smile, new father Glenn Iwamoto bade farewell to the 1980s and rang in the 1990s with a child for each decade--twin boys delivered two minutes apart. One son came before the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, the other just after.

Blair Michael Rikio Iwamoto arrived at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, and his brother, Brooks Glenn Joji Iwamoto, arrived at 12:01 a.m. Monday at Tarzana Regional Medical Center. Their mother, Jill Iwamoto, had endured 22 hours of labor that ended when her doctor performed a Cesarean section.

Visited at the hospital by relatives from Fresno, the Valencia couple was among a handful of people celebrating new family members who will be dubbed the first babies of the year and the decade. The latter of the Iwamoto twins may have been the first child born in Los Angeles County this year.

At 12:09 a.m., a baby boy was delivered at the Medical Center of North Hollywood, a hospital spokeswoman said. At other hospitals, officials recorded new births beginning at 12:29 a.m. And at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, where the county recorded its first birth of last year at midnight sharp, officials admitted they were out of the running this time with no deliveries until 1:44 a.m.

“When the doctor said maybe they’d be born on different decades, that kind of hit me,” said Glenn Iwamoto, a 37-year-old supervisor at the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles office in Newhall. “It was the right timing, so I guess it was meant to be.”

The situation has its advantages, said Jill Iwamoto, 41. Cradling each child in an arm as she lay recovering in a hospital bed, the high school teacher noted, “Since they’re twins and they’ll have to share just about everything, it’ll be nice for them to have their own birthdays.”

The twins were due Jan. 6, but Jill checked into the hospital Sunday after she started contractions at 2 a.m.

After being in labor the rest of the day, Jill took the advice of her family doctor and agreed to have the babies delivered through a Cesarean.

“By that time, I was getting so tired,” she said. “People would come in and have their babies and leave, and there I was still waiting for mine.”

Hospital workers, however, also took joy in the timing of the birth.

“The closest we’ve been is 1:30 in the morning,” said nurse Arlene Petitto, reflecting on 10 years of working on New Year’s Day at the hospital’s delivery room. “I was so excited because all I’ve been hearing for the past year is that Martin Luther King hospital got it two seconds or whatever it was after midnight. Well, this time we’re the winner.”