BRIDGEPORT — A Haitian couple visiting the city for the past month will be bringing back more than souvenirs and memories. Georgeline Jean and Biguener Simeon are new parents, with Jean giving birth to the first baby born in the area in 2012.

Biguener Jr. made his entrance at 2:07 a.m. on Sunday at Bridgeport Hospital. Although the hospital had the first baby in the state in 2011, spokesman John Cappiello said the best his facility will do this year is second. “We’ve heard that a baby was born at Yale-New Haven Hospital a few minutes after midnight,” he said. The first baby born at Norwalk Hospital arrived at 4:36 a.m., a nursing supervisor there said.

Biguener Simeon said that while he is excited to be a father, having the first baby of the New Year doesn’t add much to that. “We are going to return to Haiti. We are just visiting here but we may return.”

Their child, all 8 pounds and 1 ounce of him, is an American citizen, noted Jean’s uncle, Lucien LaCrosse. “They are definitely going to (return),” LaCrosse said.

The young couple was visiting LaCrosse at his Bridgeport home for the past month; it is Jean’s first trip to the United States. “We’ve been to Italy and France,” she said. “Right now I am living in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republican, going to school to be a psychologist. I will graduate in two years.”

Biguener is a psychologist in a small city near Port-au-Prince, he said, and he and his wife plan to open a practice together.

Although the couple speaks and understands English fairly well, LaCrosse, who has lived in Bridgeport for 22 years, functioned as an interpreter.

As the infant dozed and occasionally sneezed, and the remains of a Chinese take-out meal cooled on a counter, the three talked about daily life in Haiti. Much of the damage from the earthquake that devastated the country two years ago, on Jan. 12, 2010, has been repaired, they said.

“There is more security now and things are better than before,” said LaCrosse. “Things are not really normal, but they are better.”

His niece and her husband planned their visit so that the baby could be born here, LaCrosse said. But it was not a holiday visit, he said. “We are Jehovah’s Witnesses. We do not celebrate Christmas,” the city man said.

Reach Frank Juliano at 203-520-6986 or fjuliano@ctpost.com