As many Chicagoans saw in the new year reveling with friends, glued to their TV sets or just sleeping it off, Sophia and Joshua Sartori brought new life into the world, delivering what may be the area’s first baby of 2025.
Scarlett Carmela Sartori was born at 12:12 a.m. at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Lakeview, laying early claim to becoming the first new Chicagoan of the new year. Beyond the usual sounds of labor and childbirth, the 6-pound, 15-ounce girl was delivered to the song “Mr. Jones” by Counting Crows, which came up at random on a ’90s alternative station favored by her parents.
Listening to music helped fill time between contractions, they said.
“When she finally came, ‘Mr. Jones’ came on by the Counting Crows,” Sophia Sartori, 35, said during a video interview from the hospital Wednesday. “So we all said, ‘OK, this is going to be her special song, because that was playing all along when she finally came to the world.’”
A former English teacher, Sophia said their baby’s name was inspired by “The Scarlet Letter,” one of her favorite books.
Scarlett is the first child for the Sartoris, who live in Chicago’s Irving Park neighborhood. Hospital staff had been guessing whether Scarlett would be a New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day baby, and when midnight arrived it prompted a delivery room celebration anticipating that the baby girl might come into the world with a time-honored title attached to her name.
Joshua Sartori, 35, a former football player at Division III powerhouse North Central College who now works at Kraft Heinz in Chicago, said the odds for a New Year’s Day delivery rose soon after the labor process began.
“I was really hoping it would be a quick labor for not only her sake, but the fact that Dec. 30 is my birthday, and I wanted to share it with her,” he said. “But it became very clear early on that we were going to wait some time for her arrival.”
Other early 2025 babies included an infant girl born to Ingrid Brandt of Chicago at 1:03 a.m. at Rush University Medical Center, and Lukas Kuras, an 8-pound, 8-ounce boy born to Rachael Dewitt and Tomas Kuras of Plainfield who arrived at 2:06 a.m. at Rush Copley Medical Center in Aurora.
While other contenders may yet emerge, the Sartoris are enjoying not only the birth of their first child but the sudden celebrity of having the first Chicago baby of the new year.
“It is surreal,” Sophia said. “We are just so excited that we’re able to say that we have the first Chicago baby in ’25.”
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
