By Melissa Wagoner
If the odds of giving birth on Leap Day are one in 1,461, the odds of two cousins sharing the same Leap Day birthday are, well, extremely low.
“We did the math,” Laura Pemble said, recalling the day she discovered that not only was her daughter-in-law, Ivy Pemble, pregnant with her first child, but her daughter, Megan Peetz, was pregnant with her second.
“I said, ‘Oh, they’ll be a few weeks apart,’” Laura remembered.
With neither expectant mother due within a week of Feb. 29, it came as a surprise to everyone when both Megan and Ivy went into labor on the same auspicious day. Both were admitted to Legacy Silverton.
“I was so close it was killing me,” Megan said, recalling how it felt to be laboring only a few doors away from Ivy, and still unable to visit her friend.
Because Ivy and Megan are more than just family.
“We all grew up together and all went to the same school,” Megan said, describing how both couples met during their time at Willamette Valley Christian School in Salem.
And now their children – Ivy and Carson’s daughter, Wren, born at 12:49 p.m. and Megan and Cort’s son, Wesley, born at 7:30 p.m. – share the same remarkable birthday.
“I think every four years we’ll have to have a huge, big birthday party,” Ivy speculated.
In the meantime, the cousins will get to choose which day to celebrate their birthday. If they decide to hold it on Feb. 28, amazingly, Wren and Wesley will share it with another set of cousins – a set of twins born Feb. 28 to Ivy’s sister-in-law.
“We joked about it because we all three wanted my sister as our doula,” Megan said. Her sister, nurse Brittany Hutchison, had a remarkably busy couple of days because of the back-to-back births.
And she wasn’t alone. Grandma Laura’s schedule was full as well.
“The people at the hospital were like, ‘Who are you here to see?’” she laughed, recalling her answer, which beat all the odds – two Leap Day grandbabies.
