By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Oftentimes when we’re searching for the first baby of the New Year, it’s pretty clear-cut who the winner is. So when we got word that the Rabbi Zevi and his wife Leeba Goldberg, who run Chabad of Snohomish County, had had a baby boy on the Friday morning following Rosh Hashanah, we thought we had our (little) man.
But it turns out that Jessica Pearlman had the Goldbergs beat, by a day and a half, and hardly an hour and a half after the sunset the New Year began. And that’s how Ilia Cecile Pearlman Oliver entered the world as the first Jewish baby of 5771 in Washington State.
Ilia was born in her own home on Sept. 8 at 8:44 p.m., weighing 8 pounds, 4 ounces. So far, everything’s going great, said new mom Jessica.
“I think it’s awesome,” said Pearlman about Ilia’s status as the first. “There’s something about the fact that she threatened to come at 29-1/2 weeks, then waited to come at the beginning of 5771…. It’s the neatest thing.”
Labor, as Pearlman put it, depended upon how you count it: It took either three hours or 11 weeks and three hours, because she started having contractions 11 weeks early and there was some fear the baby would come prematurely. But Ilia held out even past her due date by two days.
What makes the timely arrival all the more surprising is that at eight months of pregnancy, her family moved to Capitol Hill. Pearlman was on bed rest, however, so her husband, Tony Oliver, had to deal with the movers. Still, she said, “there was a lot of concern Ilia would come simultaneously with the moving.”
Ilia doesn’t come into the world alone. In addition to her mom and dad, she’s also got a very proud and excited big sister, Mian, who turns 4 in November.
“She’s been great, she’s really thrilled,” said Pearlman of her older daughter. “She was the one who was lobbying for a sibling for a long time.”
Regardless of whether Ilia was the first Jewish baby of the year, the significance of her coming on Rosh Hashanah still means a lot to Pearlman.
“Every Rosh Hashanah I’ll be thinking about the birth and what the experience was like,” Pearlman said.
The High Holidays already have a bittersweet tinge in the cycle of Pearlman’s family’s life — when she was in high school, her grandfather died on Yom Kippur.
“I always remember him then and think about him,” she said.
Pearlman, a partner at the law firm K&L Gates, said she’d probably return to work in about six months. She also sits on the board of Hillel at the University of Washington.