Photo courtesy of Avera Marshall Lay Gay Paw and Nyaw Tae, of Marshall, welcome their new baby Ne Na on Jan. 4. Ne Na is the first baby born at Avera Marshall Medical Center in 2024.

MARSHALL — A Marshall family welcomed a new arrival late last week. The new baby was also the first born at Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center in 2024.

Ne Na was born at 4:06 p.m. on Thursday, Avera Marshall representatives said. Ne Na is the fifth child of Lay Gay Paw and Nyaw Tae of Marshall.

It’s not possible to predict when the first baby of a new year will be born. But over the past several years, the first babies born at Avera Marshall in each year have arrived within the first few days of the month, said Stacy Neubeck, communications partner at Avera Marshall. Babies were born on New Year’s Day in 2023, 2022, and 2020. All three were born in the morning, with the earliest arriving at 2:44 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2023.

In 2017 through 2019, the first babies of the new year arrived on Jan. 2 or Jan. 3.

In recent years two babies, including Ne Na, were born on Jan. 4. In 2021, the first baby of the year was born in the early hours of the morning on Jan. 4.