Brand new family
Ahead of baby Neve’s first birthday, spoke to another Kiwi family who are celebrating their child’s first birthday about the trials and tribulations of their first year of parenthood.
When Nadia Abu-Shanab went into labour, she knew she may give birth on the same day as New Zealand’s Prime Minister.
‘‘I did keep thinking, ‘what if I’m in hospital at the same time as Jacinda Ardern and the nurses are stretched’?’’
The Wellington early childhood teacher had daughter Yasmeen Peterson on June 11, while Neve Ardern Gayford will celebrate her first birthday on June 21.
The babies also have Ma¯ori middle names in common – Yasmeen’s is Ahi Ka¯, which means means ‘‘to keep the home fires burning’’, and was gifted to her by Ma¯ ori godmothers. Neve’s is Te Aroha, meaning love, and was suggested to the first family by iwi around the country. It’s also Ardern’s birthplace.
The name Yasmeen is a nod to her Palestinian roots. Her maternal grandfather was born in a West Bank cave and migrated to the UK aged 17. He married an English woman and they moved to New Zealand when Abu-Shanab was 14. She’s now 30.
Abu-Shanab’s union organiser husband Ben Peterson, 30, is Australian but on the cusp of New Zealand citizenship.
A year into life, Yasmeen has mastered walking and saying ‘‘mum’’, ‘‘dad’’, ‘‘hi’’ and arguably also ‘‘car’’.
Before Yasmeen was born, her parents-to-be expected her to follow her mum’s Middle Eastern heritage but she arrived blonde, plump and rosy – the spitting image of Peterson’s grandmother.
‘‘I know that’s how genes work, but it was strange to have this little version of my nan pop out,’’ Peterson says.
The new family went home to their Porirua bungalow, bought just a few months prior to Yasmeen’s arrival.
A year on and she’s bubbly, incredibly social and trusting, she toddles up to strangers and charms them with giggles. Her parents roll with it, they say, and resulting interactions have made them like humans in general more.
‘‘Everyone wants to share in the journey and I actually love that,’’ Abu-Shanab says.
But the first year is tough, too. Abu-Shanab found being stuck at home isolating and Yasmeen was taken to hospital with bronchiolitis, which was terrifying.
Both Abu-Shanab and Peterson were rebellious teenagers and now cringe at what they put their parents through.
‘‘Now I feel like there’s this big bubble of karma hanging over me,’’ says Peterson.
Abu-Shanab is optimistic. She believes their relationship with Yasmeen will be one where their daughter doesn’t feel the need to push boundaries: ‘‘But who knows, maybe I’m naively confident.’’
Peterson got six weeks off work when Yasmeen was born, the same period Ardern took off from her prime ministerial duties. He loved it and in a hypothetical world says he’d ‘‘actually be stoked to be a stay at home dad’’ like Gayford.
But the couple say they can’t afford to not both work.
They take their hats off to Ardern for running the country while raising a baby.
‘‘We’ve said so many times ‘I just don’t know how she does it’. Then we return to the point of, ‘I guess she’s probably not doing quite as much laundry as we are’.’’