Sara Duterte gives birth to healthy boy

Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte and her husband, Manases Carpio, hold their newly born baby, Stonefish, for his first ever photograph, on March 2, 2017. (Photo courtesy of Mans Carpio)

DAVAO CITY — Mayor Sara Duterte gave birth to a healthy baby boy through ceasarian section on Thursday.

City Information Office Jefry Tupas said the baby, weighing 2.42 kilograms or 5.3 pounds, was delivered around 12:56 p.m.

The baby, Mayor Duterte’s third child, was named Stonefish, Tupas said.

“Thank you, Lord, for the gift of life,” lawyer Manases Carpio, the local chief executive’s husband, said.

Carpio said Sara was “stable” and “generally fine.”

When her pregnancy – through In Vitro Fertilization – was confirmed in July 2016, the mayor said she and her family were expecting triplets and that she was taking a three-week leave of absence.

But a few weeks later, she announced that she had lost two of the babies.

The mayor said that her doctor confirmed the “fetal demise” of the two.  “When I went for a check up last Monday, the doctor said the identical twins didn’t have heartbeats anymore,” Duterte, one of President Duterte’s two daughters, said in September.

Duterte and her husband have two other children, Sharky and Stingray.  SFM/rga