Hawaii’s first baby of 2012, Faith Erin Fielden, was born at Tripler Army Medical Center at 12:02 a.m. New Year’s Day to an Army doctor who is training to deliver babies.

Capt. Aaron Fielden, 28, of Knoxville, Tenn., interns at Tripler and knows some of the staff who assisted his wife, Erin Fielden, a 31-year-old nurse, through three days of labor.

But Capt. Fielden was focused on helping his wife rather than using her labor and delivery to further his obstetrics and gynecology training.

"They tried, they tried but I kept telling them, ‘I have my daddy hat on,’" Fielden said at Tripler hours after his daughter’s birth. "They did their best. But it was one of the longest labors I’ve ever seen."

Erin Fielden of Galion, Ohio, was supposed to deliver the couple’s first child on Jan. 18, but doctors induced her labor on Wednesday.

Asked whether she was trying to deliver Hawaii’s first baby of the new year, Erin said, "We hadn’t planned on it at all. They started my induction on the 28th and it just happened."

The Fieldens did not realize until about 1:30 a.m. Sunday that Faith was Hawaii’s first baby of 2012.

"We heard the nurses screaming and carrying on down the hall because they were excited," Erin Fielden said.

Faith weighed in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces, was 20.5 inches long and spent her first several hours sleeping.

The family will move to Texas in June, when Capt. Fielden will focus on his OB/GYN training in San Antonio.

The couple have been married for two and a half years.

The second baby of the year, a boy, appears to have been born at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children at 12:38 a.m., Kapiolani officials said.

Kona Community Hospital had a baby born at 1:45 a.m., said Tripler spokeswoman Janet Clark.

Tripler had two other babies born after Faith — at 4:52 a.m. and at 9:52 a.m.