STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More Local News

• Bryan Milk named City of Marco Island Parks and Recreation Director
• Merchants pulling out all the stops to encourage Islanders to shop local
• City Manager's Weekly Report

Share and Enjoy [?]

One week after Yuniel Casas began dating Yanet Silvera, he bought her engagement ring. He just knew, he said.

Two years ago, the couple, both immigrants from Cuba, married.

Tuesday, they added a new member to their family.

Kevin Casas entered the world at 7:31 a.m. at The Birth Place at NCH North Naples Hospital. Kevin, Yuniel and Yanet’s first child and the first baby of 2008 in Collier County, weighed 7 pounds, 8 ounces at birth and measured 20½ inches long.

The Golden Gate couple, both 20 years old, said they were happy to have the county’s first baby, and received a special gift basket from the hospital filled with baby goodies.

Yuniel works as a supervisor in receiving at the Wal-Mart on U.S. 41 East and Collier Boulevard and said his wife’s pregnancy is all his co-workers have been asking him about.

“Every day I go into work and say, ‘Not yet’,” Yuniel said.

Kevin lay between his parents on the hospital bed, quiet and yawning gently at times while Yuniel and Yanet held hands and rubbed each other’s fingers.

Kevin’s birth beat out another baby by about an hour, said Lisa Woolley, a charge nurse at The Birth Place on duty Tuesday. As of mid-afternoon, there were only three babies born at the hospital Tuesday, Woolley said.

“It’s incredibly unusual for us to have so many empty rooms,” Woolley said. “It’s a very busy unit.”

As for Yuniel and Yanet, they plan to add to their family again, but not right away.

“When I forget about the pain, then we’ll have another,” Yanet said.

About 17 miles away from Yanet, Yuniel and Kevin, another baby was held by her parents for the first time.

There was Corwin Sampson’s 11th child, but still a surprise.

So much so that Sampson, 45, and his girlfriend, Jennifer Sopka, 29, named their new daughter Clarisse Surprise Sampson.

Clarisse was the first and only baby born at Physicians Regional Medical Center-Collier Boulevard on Jan 1.

The hospital celebrated its first New Year’s Day with the 208th baby born since it opened in February, according to Jennifer Meyers, a charge nurse on duty Tuesday in the women’s pavilion.

Clarisse weighed 6 pounds, 11 ounces, at birth and measured 19 inches. She wore a knit cap and looked peaceful when rocked in her mother’s and father’s arms.

“She’s perfect,” Sopka said.

Sampson, a maintenance worker, and Sopka live on Marco Island. Sopka has a 7-year-old daughter, Ronain, and nine of Sampson’s 10 other children, including eight girls, are aged 13 and under. Sampson’s eldest son, Christopher, 25, is a staff sergeant in the Army and on his second tour in Iraq, Sampson said.

The couple, who have been dating for one year, spent their New Year’s Eve watching Spider-Man 3 on DVD. Sopka started feeling labor pains around 4 a.m. and they headed to the hospital. Nearly seven hours later, at 10:55 a.m., Clarisse was born.

Sampson is originally from Oklahoma, but Sopka was born at NCH Downtown Naples Hospital. They plan to leave the area in couple months once he can find a job as an oil worker.

Sampson, a delivery room veteran by this point, said he’s pleased at how smoothly the birth went.

“They’re all different, but they’re all the same,” he said.