His mother’s due date was New Year’s Eve, but the first Grand Rapids baby born in 2019 waited until it was New Year’s Day to come into the world.
Riggs Wilder Deming was born at 1:16 a.m. on New Year’s Day at Spectrum Health to parents Lexie and Ian Deming.
Ian Deming is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate. They are from Michigan and after he served five years in the Navy, they moved to west Michigan to start their family. Riggs is her first baby, and Lexie says she was in labor for nearly 30 hours.
“The nurse came in about 5 minutes after everybody said 'Happy New Year' and said alright guys we are having this New Year’s baby so let’s go,” recalls Lexie. “An hour later he was born.”
“Being the first-born baby of the new year was not top priority,” laughs Ian Deming. “But we are pretty excited.”
“He will always have the day off and a party on his birthday,” adds Lexie.
Riggs isn't the only one in his family to have a unique story about his birth.
Lexie and Ian were born two days apart in the same Lansing hospital and went to the same high school. But there was no romantic connection until they met again at a birthday party while he was on leave from the Naval Academy.
“We continued to write letters to each other and fell in love that way,” she says. “He got a lot cuter from high school. It could have been something about a man in a uniform. It kind of worked out really perfectly for us.”
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