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If a few more ticks of the clock had passed when his son was born, brand-new father Michael Acuna would have been given a pretty special gift for Father’s Day. His son, 7 pound 8 ounces, Porter Gavin Grimes, wanted to take his first breath in the outside world at 11:55 p.m. Saturday.

Just the same, Acuna said he is thankful.

“It was my first Father’s Day, so it was special,” he said.

Acuna’s girlfriend, Allison Grimes, said she and her mother were about to get some lunch when the pain started. Eleven hours later, she was holding her son.

“He’s really cute,” she said. “It’s awesome being a mother.”

Grimes, 19, hasn’t been a mother for very long, but feels like she will be prepared for what comes with raising her son. And as for the dad, “I think he’ll be a great parent,” she said.

Acuna, 19, and an employee of Pinchers in El Campo, also has a younger brother and other family members he assists in taking care of.

“He’s a great caregiver. I think he’ll be a very good father,” Grimes said.

The birth was a gift to her father as well, she said. It marks the first boy born on her side of the family.

As relatives gathered to visit the smiling couple and their baby, a few doors down the hall at DeTar Hospital North, Benjamin Verret waited anxiously for the mother of his child, Sara Lewis, to have their son, Caleb Wyatt Verret.

A few minutes before 4 p.m., Verret was all smiles. The 28-year-old welder witnessed his first son’s birth on Father’s Day.

“It’s pretty cool. I couldn’t imagine a better Father’s Day,” he said.

Caleb weighed 4 pounds 2 ounces when he was born and was placed in the neo-natal intensive care unit. Lewis required additional care due to her appendix, which would have ruptured, had it not been removed after delivery.

“It was hectic for a while,” Verret said. “The wait was well worth it.”

Verret’s mother, Sabrina, said she had never seen her son smile as much as he was doing in the hospital room on Sunday.

Acuna could already see his son’s future played out in his eyes after he was born.

“I can’t wait until he gets older,” he said, thinking of sports and being able to play ball with Gavin.

Verret, on the other hand is not looking too far past today.

“As long as he’s all right and she’s all right, I can get back to work,” he said.

Bj Lewis is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6535 or bjlewis@vicad.com.