The first bundle

Carlos and Marisela Aguilera weren’t expecting their first baby until the middle of January, but when they found themselves in the delivery room at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian late New Year’s Eve they were forced to make a difficult spur-of-the-moment decision: In which year should their child be born?

It’s not a decision that many parents have control over after conception — babies just come when they come — but faced with the option Carlos and Marisela chose to try to postpone the birth until the New Year.

For Marisela, that meant making a concerted effort to resist the baby’s progress out of her womb, an experience that didn’t come without its share of extra pain. But in the heat of the moment, as midnight was drawing near, the parents decided that it was of grave importance to keep a pattern alive in the family.

“It was uncomfortable but we wanted a New Year’s baby. We all have nines in our birth years,” Marisela said.

She was born in 1989, and her husband was born in 1979.

The family is certainly not lacking in the toughness or pain tolerance necessary to prolong a process that most women dread for years before they have their first baby. Both Carlos and Marisela are active duty Marines living outside of Camp Pendleton. As an infantry man, Carlos fought on the front lines in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Marisela, who grew up in Costa Mesa, works with supplies. The couple was in town visiting family.

In fact, the father would have been watching his son, Carlos Matthew, enter the world on a television screen in Iraq if it hadn’t been for torn ligaments in his arm that he suffered while practicing martial arts.

He was scheduled to redeploy but was held back because of his injury.

“What they would have done is had a cameraman on call recording the birth, and I would have seen it live in Iraq,” Carlos said.

The father was profoundly thankful to be by his wife’s side instead.

The hours passed as the New Year approached, and Marisela held back the child until about 11:45 p.m. when the doctor stepped in and told the mother that the birth was imminent and couldn’t be postponed any more.

“The nurse said it’s going to be the doctor’s decision. You can only wait so long,” Marisela said.

So the delivery began. And it took just long enough to fulfill the parents’ wish. Carlos Matthew was born at 12:01 a.m., the first child of the new year at Hoag, weighing a little more than 7 pounds and endowed with the stoicism and docility of his parents. He laid in a crib beside Marisela’s bed sleeping silently.

“He hasn’t cried at all. When he was born they tried to make him cry but he wouldn’t,” Carlos said.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.