Spring is here, which means flowers are blooming and so are babies. At Mt. Sinai Hospital last Thursday, at 12:40 p.m., one of The New York Sun’s columnists, Sara Berman, gave birth to a girl weighing 7 pounds, 14 ounces. Baby Berman, also known as “5/05/05,” at least until her parents choose a name, joins siblings Jacob, 6, Josh, 4, and Kira, 2.

Delivering a bundle of joy was a nice lead-in to Mother’s Day, a favorite holiday of Mrs. Berman and her mother, Judy Steinhardt, who for five years now have celebrated it with a select group of women at a fund-raising luncheon.

The event Monday raised nearly $100,000 for Makor, the cultural center for Jews in their 20s and 30s that was founded by Mrs. Berman’s father, Michael Steinhardt, who is a director of The New York Sun.

Makor, the West Side outpost of the 92nd Street Y, offers film screenings, live music, art exhibits, and a cafe in a town house on West 67th Street. It is designed to promote Jewish continuity by encouraging Jewish singles to meet, become couples, then husbands and wives, and eventually parents.

“Makor is like motherhood: It’s about the transmission of values,” Mrs. Berman told the crowd of 100 guests, composed mainly of mothers and their adult daughters and daughters-in-law. The special guests of honor were the pregnant women, including Jessica Muss and Emily Stern, who are due any minute, and Wendy Chaiken and Sharon Hurowitz, who are expecting in August.

Event chairwomen offered poems and stories about motherhood. Marcia Applebaum, mother of Lisa Applebaum Haddad, read a Jewish proverb: “God could not be everywhere. Therefore, he made mothers.” Barbara Lane, mother of Meredith Verona, read “The Giving Tree,” breaking up into tears toward the end of the story, when the tree tells the boy, “I have nothing left. I am just an old stump.” The book by Shel Silverstein is a favorite of Mrs. Lane’s granddaughter, Avery Verona,3, who drew the tree that appeared on the luncheon invitation.

With a newborn at home, Mrs. Berman departed before many of the guests, but not before she asked her mom if it would be okay to leave.

***

Speaking of motherhood, Erica Reid, wife of Island Def Jam chairman Antonio “L.A.” Reid, was kvelling about her children at yesterday’s Safe Horizon Champion Awards luncheon. “They are a blessing like nothing else in the world, they’re always on my mind,” Mrs. Reid said. Both children take after their musical father. Addison, 2, “is a natural with a drumstick,” Mrs. Reid said, while 4-year-old Arianna is already a performer: Mom recently caught her belting out Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out,” aping moves from Mariah Carey’s latest music video.