Baby, Take a Bow

OK, baby Nevic, you win. We concede you the title of 6 billionth human on Earth, even though there’s something a bit cloying and self-serving about this stunt pulled by the United Nations.

So U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan just happened to be in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tuesday when your mother, Fatima, gave birth at a Sarajevo hospital. And you just happened to arrive at 12:02 a.m., Sarajevo time, on the very day (Oct. 12) the U.N. Population Fund projected the world population would hit 6 billion.

Well, we were going to show you a thing or two, baby Nevic. We were going to find a baby born in Los Angeles County between midnight and 12:02 that day--the true claimant to the symbolic title.

And so the search began. We called Cedars-Sinai. Sorry, but they could offer a baby born at 11:59 p.m. Oct. 11. We called UCLA Medical Center. We called County-USC Medical Center. We called Daniel Freeman in Inglewood, Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, Northridge Medical Center, Good Samaritan, Providence-St.Joseph in Burbank, the Kaiser Permanente chain, St. John’s in Santa Monica, Long Beach Memorial, St. Francis in Lynwood (where almost 500 babies have been born this month--but not one between midnight and 12:02 a.m. Oct. 12). All told, we queried about two dozen hospitals. Eager to please, spokespersons at several suggested, “Well, we could lie. . . . “ They offered babies born just before midnight, at 2 a.m., 4 a.m., 5 a.m.

In the end, we had to admit defeat. The closest local pretender to the 6 billionth baby title is Chloe Kewish, 8 lbs. 4 oz., born at 12:09 a.m. Oct. 12 at Simi Valley Hospital to Shavonne Muniz-Jett, who’s training as a dog groomer, and Thomas Kewish, a golf course caretaker, both of Simi Valley. Congratulations, mom and dad. Welcome, Chloe.

And, oh, yeah, congratulations to you, too, baby Adnan over there in Sarajevo.