Baby Girl (No. 3) Delivers Omen of Lucky Decade

Three, as it turns out, is a lucky number for the Tran family of Long Beach.

Although Joe Tran and his wife, Khanh Quach, started the 1980s with little more than hopes and dreams, the birth of their third daughter, Michelle, at 20 seconds past midnight Sunday, has prompted the Vietnamese-born couple to anticipate prosperity in the coming decade.

“Vietnamese tradition says that if you have three girls, you will be lucky for a very long time,” Tran joked Monday as he sat with his wife and two other daughters in a room at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center.

The fact that his youngest daughter was being bestowed celebrity status hours after she came into the world was proof to Tran, who came to the United States in 1979, that the tradition he learned in his native country has some validity.

“The next 10 years will be very prosperous for us,” he said, looking dog-tired but nevertheless smiling broadly and talking animatedly to reporters and hospital staff members Monday afternoon.

Michelle--who weighed 9 pounds, 7 ounces and measured 20 1/2 inches long--was one of the first babies born in Southern California in 1990. She was delivered with no complications and after a short labor, Dr. Co Pham, the family physician, said.

The good fortune expected by the Tran family of Long Beach was already manifesting itself Monday in the form of gifts from the hospital, said hospital spokeswoman Sheila Holliday.

Michelle and her mother were given flowers, four weeks of diaper service and formula and a large teddy bear, Holliday said.

Michelle was born amid cheering and clapping as hospital staffers in the delivery room shouted out the last seconds of 1989, then urged Quach to make “one last push” at the stroke of midnight, Pham, her physician, said.

“It was very exciting for all of us,” said Pham, who also delivered the family’s second daughter. “It is such a joy to share this with the family.”

Michelle’s well-timed birth came unexpectedly, Tran and his wife explained as they and their two older daughters, Christina, 6, and Susan, 3, fussed over the infant Monday afternoon. Knowing that Quach’s due date was Jan. 10, they had no expectations of their baby ending up one of the first children to be born in the 1990s.

Then Quach experienced false labor on Friday. After an examination, she was sent home. Pham had assured her that she would not begin real labor until at least Monday.

But after the couple closed their Long Beach fabric store at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Quach began complaining of back pains, Tran said. They went home and instead of going out “dancing and having a party,” Tran watched a cable sports channel on television while Quach rested.

Quach’s attempt to take care of her backache for the evening was short-lived.

Within two hours, Tran found himself frantically calling Dr. Pham, taking the children to grandma’s house and driving his wife to the hospital.

Pham, meantime, said that he left relatives visiting from San Francisco at his house to celebrate the New Year without him.

“She called me and just said, ‘It’s here. It’s here,’ ” Pham said.

Quach was admitted to the hospital at 9:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, Pham said. And for much of the labor it appeared that Michelle would be the last baby born in 1989, he said.

But by 11:55 p.m., Pham and Tran, who paced back and forth nervously in the delivery room, changed their commands and instead of telling Quach to push, began telling her to relax for a few minutes.

“Everyone was saying, ‘Hold it. Hold it,’ ” Tran said. A nurse then brought a radio into the delivery room so the medical staff could listen to the countdown “just to be sure,” Pham said.

And as the piped-in voices of revelers in New York filled the delivery room, the obstetrics staff cheered on Quach, Pham said. As it turned out, baby Myra Kristine Palmer was born 5 seconds earlier at a birthing center on the grounds of Melodyland Christian Center in Anaheim.

Tran, 36, an ex-Vietnamese soldier who in 1979 fled Ho Chi Minh City on a boat to Malaysia, said that watching the birth of his third daughter was the most memorable event of his life.

Tran suffered hardship and the specter of death following the fall of Saigon, but his luck began to change when he arrived in the United States, he said.

He and Quach, 28, met in Dallas, where they had both settled. But Tran left his new home to follow Quach and her mother to California.

“I couldn’t help it. I was in love,” Tran said. “She is a strong woman.”

Tradition notwithstanding, Tran and Quach had hoped for a son the third time around but said Monday they are satisfied that they now have three daughters.

Besides, Tran quipped, tradition also says that “if you have three daughters and then four sons, you will become a billionaire.”