By Pam Wright
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Paige Weierstall didn’t even think she was in labour when she arrived at the hospital at 12:30 a.m. New Year’s Day.
But Addison Alexandra Maria Pickering had other ideas and made her debut at Chatham-Kent Health Alliance about seven hours later at 8:48 a.m.
As C-K’s first baby of 2025, the infant is 19 inches long and weighs in at 7 lbs. 7 oz.
The new mom, who was 38 and half weeks pregnant, thought she was simply having Braxton Hicks contractions – a common type of contraction soon-to-be moms experience as a warmup for the real thing.
“I didn’t know I was in labour,” Weierstall told The Voice later in the day. “So, I decided to go just to see and I found out I was already two centimetres dilated.
“It was actually pretty smooth,” the mother of two said of the birth experience, adding she and partner Tim Pickering are also parents to an 18-month-old boy named Emerson.
According to Weierstall, the baby’s big brother doesn’t know what to think of his sister and “just stares at her.”
The Dresden couple picked the name Addison because they liked it. Alexandra is also Weierstall’s second name, and the name Maria comes from Tim’s mother.
Ironically, baby Addison was believed to be a boy based on a blood test and this was announced at a gender reveal to 45 people when Weierstall was 14 weeks pregnant.
The couple found out later when getting ultrasound pictures done at Bump View in Chatham that the baby was a girl.
“She checked over and over just to be sure,” said the new mom.
Baby Addison is one of three babies born at CKHA on New Year’s Day. A second was born 30 minutes after her and a third came into the world later in the afternoon.
