New Year's little darlings in the UAE

Abu Dhabi/Dubai: Babies bring boundless joy to parents. When they arrive on New Year's Day, the happiness goes up several notches. Several couples in the UAE were ecstatic when their bundles of joy arrived on January 1; one of them was blessed with triplets.

The first baby of the New Year in the UAE was a baby girl, named Mariam (pictured on the right) born to an Emirati couple in Abu Dhabi, who was delivered at 12.15am yesterday. "This sets the tone for the rest of the year,' said her overjoyed father.

Girls seemed to be in a hurry.

In Dubai too, a baby girl became the first in 2012, arriving at 12.34am. She was named Al Anood, Arabic for a ‘doe-eyed beauty', by her parents — a Moroccan mother and an Emirati father. But a baby boy in Al Ain broke the trend, becoming the year's first-born in the Oasis City.

A boy could have become the UAE's first baby of the year, but he arrived too early and ended up being the last baby of last year. He was delivered at 10.35pm on December 31 in Dubai's Al Wasl Hospital. Abdullah's was the last birth of 2011 in Abu Dhabi, at the Corniche Hospital.

An armed forces officer in Abu Dhabi found that baby delights came in three bundles when his wife gave birth to triplets, the first of the year. "It is still beyond belief ...," he said.