HAVING discovered she was pregnant last Easter, Caroline Nelson was amazed to be told later on that the baby was due to be born on Christmas Day.

But her daughter Athena had other ideas and ended up being born at York Hospital on another momentous occasion - less than an hour into New Year’s Day, to a background accompaniment of fireworks exploding.

Athena Rose Etherington was the first baby of the new decade to be born at the hospital and one of the country’s first New Year babies.

Caroline, 25, of Crayke, near Easingwold, said she and her partner Richard Etherington, 34, had found out she was pregnant with her first child on Easter Sunday last year.

She said that when medics later told them the baby’s due date was December 25, she couldn’t believe it.

She had her bags packed and was ready to go into hospital on Christmas Day “but nothing happened”.

She finally went fully into labour on New Year’s Eve and the couple drove down the A19 into York as people were preparing to celebrate the arrival of the new decade.

“It was about 6pm when we arrived and I thought she would be born on New Year’s Eve but she was born at 0.56am during the fireworks,” she said. “She was 8lbs, 2ozs.”

The Press has already reported how Arthur Henry Pattison was so determined to be a New Year baby that he arrived 17 days early at York Hospital, at 7.48am on January 1.

His parents Amelia and Martin, of Brayton, near Selby, had been taken by surprise by Amelia going into labour in the middle of the night, while she was asleep.

The couple needed to make a quick dash up the A19 to get to the hospital in time, but first they had to drive in the opposite direction to Selby to pick up Amelia’s mother Ann, and also to collect Amelia’s pregnancy notes, which she had left there thinking she wouldn’t be going into labour any time soon.

The first baby to be born on Christmas Day at the hospital was Sebastian James Nicholls, born to Adam and Kim Nicholls.

Kim’s waters broke while she was out for lunch at the Cross Keys in Dunnington, and it has emerged she was the second woman to have gone into labour while at the pub.