The first Syrian refugee family to have a baby after moving to Dunedin have high hopes for their newborn Kiwi daughter.
On one hand she and her husband, Mohomad Issa Alomar, were proud to have a New Zealand-born daughter, but she missed not being able to have extended family around.
"It's not easy because her family wasn't with her,'' Mrs Harris said.
But this longing for family back home was eased by the excellent standard of care they received and they were grateful to staff at Dunedin Hospital who helped deliver their daughter.
The situation was very different from the expensive birth of their first daughter, Bissah, in Lebanon, where the pair met after separately escaping the Syrian conflict.
She was "very proud'' and happy to have a baby in New Zealand and pleased her daughter would get citizenship straight away.
Their main priority was for both daughters to get a good education and their dream was for Meriam to be a doctor and Bissah to be a lawyer.
They were settling into Dunedin well and were grateful to the Red Cross volunteers and others for making the process easier and stopping them from feeling isolated.
Mr Alomar, who was a chef in Syria, said he was keen to learn English and get to know Dunedin and New Zealand better before setting up a restaurant.
"Dunedin is a very nice city to be and is safe and the people are very kind and welcoming.''
Mr Alomar, from Yarmouk Camp in Damascus, escaped to Lebanon in 2011 and his wife, originally from Aleppo, escaped to that country in 2013.
