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QuickTake:
Two baby boys arrived at area hospitals days before their due dates, starting 2026 off with excitement for their families.
Samanta Hansen, 33, gave birth to Luka Hansen at PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend just a half-hour after the New Year’s Eve ball dropped.
Luka arrived at 12:29 a.m. Jan. 1, 2026. He was 7 pounds, 7.4 ounces and came into the world 5½ hours after the Hansens got to the hospital and seven days earlier than expected.
“It’s an awesome New Year’s present,” dad Devin Hansen said. “You can’t enter 2026 any better than this, especially being the first baby born in the city. That’s pretty cool.”
With Luka sleeping in her arms, Samanta Hansen said, “It’s going to be a good year.”
On the morning of Jan. 2, Sarah and Matt Mayer had just enough time to drop off their toddler at day care before the contractions got serious.
They arrived at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center at 8 a.m. and Edward Mayer was born 33 minutes later, that hospital’s first baby of 2026.
“He was very quick,” Sarah Mayer, 33, said.
Mayer delivered Edward without an epidural or pain medication. Weighing in at 7 pounds, 10 ounces, Edward’s efficient entrance to the world came four days before his planned cesarean section (scheduled due to his older brother’s more complicated birth). Edward was born without complications.
A former college athlete at Marquette University, Mayer hiked and walked up until the day she gave birth and kept up her running until two weeks before. She ran the Eugene Marathon 5K in April, finishing in a speedy 21:28 with little Edward in utero and her older son George in a stroller, and beat Flap Jill, the Krusteaz pancake mascot, giving her a year’s supply of pancake mix.
Both babies are little brothers. Luka has a sister, 3½-year-old Zara, and Edward has a brother, 21-month-old George. In an interview three hours after the birth, Mayer said she was most excited for George to meet Edward, and for her parents to come and visit from Wisconsin after having to spend the holidays apart.