2 days Ago By Rachel Fenner
Kayla and Raven Te Awa’s newborn son is not just one of the first born in Perth in 2025, but one of the first born to a new generation. The Te Awa family are yet to name their new addition but think his birthdate is pretty special and indicative of new beginnings. They recently moved from Sydney to Perth for Raven’s new job in WA’s mines.
“Reflecting on the past six months everything has been new to us — moving to a new state, starting a new career and moving to a brand new place, having a brand new baby,” Mr Te Awa said. The newborn is the family’s third child joining siblings Genesis, 5, and Logos, 18 months. Mrs Te Awa said the new baby wasn’t expected to be born on New Year’s Day — his due date was Boxing Day, five days earlier.
But he was destined to be a New Year’s baby with labour starting not long before midnight. “It was unexpected . .
. like I wanted to get an epidural but everything just happened so fast,” she said. “As soon as they said, it’s too late to get an epidural, I went into bed and just started pushing because I didn’t like the pain, I was like, okay, I’m just gonna push the baby out at once.
” He was born soon after at King Edward Hospital at 12.47am, beaten only by minutes by a baby boy born at Peel Health Campus at 12.41am.
There was a baby boom around Perth on January 1 with eight babies born at King Eddies by 2pm on Wednesday, three at Osborne Park Hospital, three at Rockingham General Hospital, three at Peel Health Campus and three at Fiona Stanley Hospital. These babies will all be newly minted-members of generation Beta. Generation Beta are born between 2025-2039 to mainly millennial and generation Z parents.
By 2034 they will make up 16 per cent of the global population and are expected to live into the 22nd century. While their predecessors, generation Alpha, experienced the rise of smart tech and AI, Beta will grow up with it fully embedded in everyday life. When asked to imagine his new son’s future, Raven envisioned technology featuring heavily.
Jonathon Nolan Ben Sutton “Looking at our experience of seeing how far technology has come since we were kids until now, who knows where it will go by the time he is our age? It’ll be far more advanced technology from where we currently are right now, it’ll be interesting,” he said. While the amount of births in WA in 2024 has not been revealed, there were 30,492 babies were born in 2023. In 2024, April to June was the busiest period with 7842 babies born, followed by January to March with 7759 and July to September with 7632.
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