PETERBOROUGH — Liam Halbedel waited until New Year’s Day before making his entry into the world. And he didn’t do it just after the stroke of midnight. Instead, the first baby of 2012 at Monadnock Community Hospital kept his mother and father waiting until early afternoon.

Liam, weighing a healthy 7 pounds, 6 ounces and measuring 19 1/2 inches, was born at 1:26 p.m., after his mom, Misty Bowne of Troy, spent her New Year’s Eve in the maternity wing.

“I’d been having contractions all day on Saturday,” Bowne, 31, said Tuesday at the hospital, as she and Liam’s father, Jessie Halbedel, prepared to take their newborn son home. “It was time to come in [to the hospital] and my sister and her husband drove me over.”

Jessie Halbedel, 34, stayed at home with the couple’s other son, 2 1/2-year-old Cameron, on Saturday.

“The contractions were mild, but they decided to keep her here for the night, which was a good thing,” Halbedel said. “I made it over for the delivery the next day.”

Liam was born about a week and a half past his predicted due date, Bowne said, and she was certainly ready for him to arrive.

“There were a lot of people in the delivery room,” she said, “but I don’t remember that much about it.”

Halbedel said Dr. Fletcher Wilson and the staff in the hospital’s maternity unit “were pretty much on the ball” and the delivery went smoothly, with no complications.

“We were very lucky,” Bowne said.

Halbedel does paving work for a living and Bowne is a stay-at-home mother. The couple said Liam has been sleeping a lot and eating well.

“He’s a good baby,” Bowne said, as she held Liam, who was drowsing contentedly. “And I slept pretty good last night. But now I’m ready to go home.”

This article appeared in the Jan. 5, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.