{"id":57213,"date":"2020-01-03T11:50:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-03T20:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/juneau-welcomes-its-first-baby-of-the-decade\/"},"modified":"2020-01-06T16:51:01","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T01:51:01","slug":"juneau-welcomes-its-first-baby-of-the-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/juneau-welcomes-its-first-baby-of-the-decade\/","title":{"rendered":"Juneau welcomes its first baby of the decade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

Juneau’s first new resident of 2020 arrived at Bartlett Regional Hospital early Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Ronarielle Poloa-Maae was born 3:45 a.m. to Marcella Poloa and Ronnie Maae of Juneau, wrote Katie Bausler, community relations director at BRH, in a press release. Ronarielle joins an older brother, RJ, who is 18 months old.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“It was exciting. I never expected it,” Poloa said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

She said that the family will just be taking things easy for a little bit.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“We’re taking baby steps,” Poloa said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\"Marcella<\/a>

Marcella Poloa amd Ronnie Maae pose with newborn daughter, Ronarielle Poloa-Maae, the first baby born in Juneau in 2020, and her older brother, JR, alongside a wooden rocking boat crafted by Dr. Lindy Jones for the first baby of the year, Jan. 1, 2020. (Courtesy Photo | Bartlett Regional Hospital)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

Dr. Lindy Jones, an ER physician, has made wooden rocking boats for the first child of the year for several years<\/a>, a tradition he continued this year.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“For the last three years, I’ve been building and giving them to the first baby of the year,” Jones said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Jones routinely makes wooden gifts for friends and colleagues for the holidays too, he said during a phone interview.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

“I’ve worked at Bartlett for 20 years,” Jones said. “I truly appreciate the hospital and all the opportunities it’s brought me and my family, and I enjoy woodworking and it’s a simple thing I can do.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

Ronarielle is home now with her family, heading together into the new decade.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

\u2022 Contact reporter Michael S. Lockett at 757-621-1197 or mlockett@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t

<\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s certainly one way to ring in a new year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":57214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":11,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,4],"tags":[552,75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-57213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home2","category-news","tag-holidays","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57213"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=57213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}