Meet ‘little peanut,’ the NWT’s 2025 New Year’s baby

Hope and Dan Sapozhnikov are the proud parents of the Northwest Territories’ first baby born in 2025.

They welcomed their daughter, Sophia, into the world at 11:16am on January 1 at Stanton Territorial Hospital in Yellowknife.

“We call her little peanut, she’s our little peanut,” Hope said. “Every day she’s opening her eyes more and more and she’s focusing on us a little bit more, but she is the light of our life and our little miracle and we’re just so grateful to have her in our life.”

Hope said she and Dan are “a Covid couple” who met in Saskatchewan in 2020, while she was in nursing school and Dan was training to be a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Hope now works as a nurse at Stanton Territorial Hospital and Dan is a pilot with 440 Transport Squadron, which is based in Yellowknife.

The couple got married in the city in August 2023. Sophia is their first child.

Hope said she was told she was in the running to have the NWT’s first baby of 2025 with two other moms who were in labour at the hospital on January 1.

“My husband was more excited,” she said of the prospect of having the New Year’s baby. “He’s like, ‘Yeah, that would be great,’ whereas I’m like, ‘Oh OK.’

“I mean that’s great, that’s fantastic, I’m more focused on getting my baby out and seeing my baby. I’ve been waiting nine months to see what she looks like.”

Delivery story

Hope said her water broke in the early morning hours of December 31. She waited to attend a scheduled prenatal appointment later that morning before checking in at the hospital. As she was doing well, she said she was sent home and told to come back once her contractions were stronger.

After things didn’t change by 10pm, Hope said they headed back to the hospital. By the next morning, she said she was still not in active labour while her daughter’s heart rate was dipping, so they decided to perform a Caesarean section.

“I work in and around the OR people and so when I had my C-section, I walked into that room, into the OR, I knew every single face in that room and I felt safe and I felt protected,” she said.

“Dan could feel that and he too felt the same way. It was just a relaxed, easy experience.”

Hope also praised the care that she received in labour and delivery and once she returned home from the hospital.

“Dan and I have nothing but amazing things to say about the care we received from the very beginning right until the end, and even now we still feel supported,” she said.

“It’s been unbelievable. We’ve felt nothing but support.”