Kahului couple welcomes first baby of the new year
Jordan Makanaloa Nakihei born early Friday morning
Hours after celebrating her birthday and the new year, Kristen Richardson-DeMello got the best present she could’ve asked for — a baby boy.
Richardson-DeMello and fiance Terell Nakihei of Kahului welcomed their son, Jordan Makanaloa Nakihei, at 7:34 a.m. Friday, the first baby of 2021 born at Maui Memorial Medical Center. He measured in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces, and 20 inches long.
“I was kind of shocked. I didn’t know,” RichardsonDeMello said after learning Jordan was the hospital’s first baby of the new year. “That was like the last thing on my mind.”
Richardson- DeMello, whose birthday is New Year’s Eve, spent the holiday at a cousin’s house and didn’t experience any contractions, so she was “definitely not expecting to give birth” the next morning at 6 a.m. when her water broke.
“I woke up my other half and we made our way here to the hospital,” RichardsonDeMello said Friday afternoon from her hospital room.
She added that she was nervous about coming to the hospital during the pandemic and had considered a home birth. However, she didn’t want to take the risk just in case any complications occurred. The hospital experience went well but was markedly different from the last time she had a child.
“It’s been 10 years since I gave birth, so it’s just very different,” she said. “Definitely wearing the mask and trying to breathe and push is not the easiest thing to do. But I’m glad that it was pretty fast and it was manageable.”
Maui Memorial is also limiting visitors, so Nakihei was the only person allowed to join Richardson-DeMello in the hospital. Jordan’s older brothers, 13-year-old Josiah and 10year-old Joseph, were eager to meet their new sibling, but like other family and friends will have to wait until Jordan is out of the hospital.
“I have lots of video phone calls and lots of texts and sending pictures and all that stuff,” Richardson-DeMello said. “They’re just waiting for us to go home so they can come visit.”
Nakihei, who works in construction, and RichardsonDeMello, who works for a freight forwarding company, were fortunate to still be working full time after a year in which unemployment skyrocketed across the country. Richardson-DeMello said her hope for 2021 and Jordan is “for him to be healthy and for this pandemic to, you can’t say go away, because we know it’s not, but for it to get better so that we can return to semi-normal life.”