Falls Church Couple Gets New Year's Noisemaker

Mom in Growing Group Giving Birth After 40

Joanna Spiro and her husband, Ron Katwan, did not have time to make any resolutions this year, or even serve the pot roast they had prepared for their New Year's Eve dinner party.

Instead, the Falls Church couple rushed to Inova Fairfax Hospital, where just after the stroke of midnight, they heard not horns and whistles but the first cries of their newborn daughter, Ilana Jessica Katwan.

Two minutes after the new year began, Spiro gave birth to her second child and the Washington area's first baby of 2007, as reported by the region's major hospitals.

At the same time, Spiro, a 41-year-old psychologist, joined a growing though still exclusive number of mothers who give birth over 40.

The census reports that of the 4 million babies born in 2002, more than 100,000 were born to women in their 40s. In 1980, fewer than 60,000 were born to women in that age group.

In the United States and Western Europe, including Germany, where Ron Katwan was born, it's becoming more common for professional couples to delay child rearing, have fewer children or forgo offspring altogether.

But unlike in Western Europe, the population in the United States continues to grow at a fast pace, with the country passing 300 million people in October.

At Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, the region's second baby of 2007 offers an example of the main reason the U.S. population continues to grow.

At 12:08 a.m., Marissa Lizette Campos took her first gasps and was soon surrounded by grandparents, aunts and uncles. Her mother, Cindy Martinez, a 25-year-old bank employee, is the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, and her father, Freddy Campos, is a 26-year-old mechanic who emigrated from Nicaragua when he was 12.

Both parents have large extended families in the United States and Central America.

Demographers estimate that about half of the 100 million newest Americans since 1967 are immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Hispanics represent the largest group of recent immigrants.

Martinez said she plans to have two children, not 12 or 14 like the families of her parents' generation. But at midnight, she said, she was happy to continue to set the precedent for population growth into the new year.

"I was pushing when the ball dropped," Martinez said. "I really wanted her to be a 2007 baby."