Aziya Dream Shingler, the first baby delivered by Northwell Health this year, defied expectations.
Aziya was born 25 days early at 12:19 a.m. on New Year’s Day at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, her 24-year-old mother, Tamari Gardner, said, weighing in at 5 pounds, 10 ounces.
“I wasn’t expecting her to come so early, because my mom kept telling me I wasn’t in labor,” Tamari Gardner, 24, a stay-at-home mother in Hempstead, recalled. “And I was like ‘something’s going on.’”
“This was my first time having a New Year’s baby,” Gardner added.
Aziya came out after 17 hours of labor, more than twice as long as it took her three other daughters. But her mother stayed on the phone throughout the entire delivery, she said, and her spouse, Aaron Shingler, 25, stayed at her side.
Aziya came out with a “strong cry,” Gardner added, but has been a “little quiet” since then.
Gardner said she was considering bucking a trend of “A” names, which came about because the father’s first name begins with an “A,” by naming her fourth daughter “Dream.” But her mother convinced her to keep it going, she said.
“I made her middle name ‘Dream,’ and her first name ‘Aziya,’” Gardner said.
Ultimately, Gardner said she has big dreams for Aziya and her three sisters, who she believes will continue to defy expectations and do good things.
“I see a bright future for them, for all four of them, sticking together,” Gardner said.
Northwell hospitals delivered about 40,000 babies in 2017.
