Baby New Year Born Just In Time

Two hours and 24 minutes after the clock struck midnight, Liam Betzlaff came into the world, the first baby born in the desert in 2012.

“Amazing. I’m so glad that he’s here,” mom Leilani Getzlaff said.

Mom wasn’t exactly sure when he would arrive — after doctors kept pushing back her due date. During her few days at Desert Regional Medical Center, a New Year’s Day baby didn’t even seem an option.

“They kept telling us that we weren’t going to have him. They said I’d be here for a week or two,” Leilani said.

“One of the nurses was telling me, she said ‘You’d be surprised. Fathers, every year, try to get their wives to hurry up so they could write them off on the tax return.’ So I’m like, ‘Hurry, hurry,'” dad Mark Getzlaff said.

Liam may have missed 2011, but his parents agree it’s a good thing he did.

Liam was born six weeks early at 5 pounds and 1 ounce. His timing literally couldn’t have been any better.

“If he would have been born a day earlier they would have put him in the NICU and kept him there for a couple weeks. Just because the couple hours difference. He would have been stuck here for at least two weeks or something like that,” Mark said.

Life really is all about timing, and Liam timed it just right — the little celebrity baby of the desert.

“All babies are celebrities,” Leilani noted.

If that’s true, then little baby Liam is a superstar.