Every baby born at UPMC’s Magee-Womens Hospital is a reason to celebrate says Heather Ambrose, the hospital’s nursing director.
But also, “we find any opportunity,” she tells Pittsburgh City Paper. “Any additional opportunity to celebrate, we take it.”
Today, Feb. 29, also known as Leap Day, offers such an occasion. Babies born today, also known as “leaplings,” will be able to boast having the rarest birthday. Because the extra day in February only occurs once every four years, the odds of being born on Leap Day are just one in 1,461.
From a medical perspective, Magee hospital staff “treat it as any other day on the calendar,” Ambrose says, noting that “we have the same number of C-sections that are usually scheduled in a day … the same [number of] people coming in for induction.”
Nonetheless, she says, Leap Day gives families and staff a moment “to just kind of celebrate the rarity of the event.”
According to birth center unit director Rebecca Lavezoli, Magee expects to deliver 25 to 35 babies on Feb. 29 out of about 10,000 deliveries nationwide.
After moving through labor, delivery, and several hours of recovery, new parents arrive at one of the hospital’s postpartum care units where, according to Lavezoli, “things settle in a little bit.” (Lavezoli also formerly directed Magee’s Mother-Baby unit, now referred to as postpartum care.)
“That’s where we tend to have celebrations on various holidays, special events,” she tells City Paper.
New Year’s is typically the most celebrated holiday, as Allegheny County also awaits the first birth, and the first baby born receives a special gift basket and hat.
For 2024, the hospital was surprised by two babies arriving at the same time — not twins, Lavezoli explains, but two babies, a newborn boy and girl, who happened to arrive at the exact same minute, 12:42 a.m. on January 1.
“We had to break into the gift shop with security and create another gift basket for for baby number two's family,” Lavezoli tells CP.
Pittsburgh itself also provides no shortage of occasions for the unit to celebrate, with families marking newborns’ birthdays alongside Steelers and Pirates milestones, Picklesburgh, the Pittsburgh Marathon — where, last year, nurses handed out knitted running shoes — even the Pittsburgh Pierogi Festival.
“We’ve had a pierogi [baby] in the unit,” Lavezoli says.
For past Leap Days, they’ve stayed on theme by decorating with leaping animals, including frogs, and grasshoppers in 2020.
“Anything that we can associate with the leap,” Ambrose tells CP.
While not technically a holiday, Leap Day serves as a so-called “intercalary” day, making up for the fact that it takes Earth slightly longer than 365 days to orbit the sun. Because there’s an extra quarter day each year, our calendar compensates by adding one full day every four years to keep on track. Without Leap Days, the calendar would gradually become misaligned with the planet, and over decades, summer would slide into November.
The extra day in February has spurred centuries of Leap Day customs, including Bachelor’s Day, begun in Ireland, where women are invited to break tradition and propose to their male partners. (This was even the subject of its own 2010 rom-com, Leap Year, starring Amy Adams). In Pittsburgh, Allentown’s Bottlerocket Social Hall nods to this with a Leap Day Party and Sadie Hawkins Dance tonight at 7 p.m.
Leaplings are also exalted, with their own Honor Society of Leap Year Day Babies and three-day-long Leap Year festival in Anthony, Texas. Their ranks include rapper Ja Rule and the late Dennis Farina of Striking Distance fame. Pittsburgh seems especially keen to honor leaplings this year, with free meals offered at any Eat'n Park restaurants (including Hello Bistro and The Porch) and a free entrée at City Works in Market Square.
Though some entities don’t legally recognize Feb. 29, birth certificates in Allegheny County list the day and are otherwise “standard,” Ambrose says, mailed to families within two weeks.
Lavezoli tells CP that despite popular belief, at least in the county, “it is not a way to stay young, because legally, you will still be your age.” She says during non Leap Years, leaplings celebrate their birthday on Feb. 28 or Mar. 1, “but most will prefer that February birth month.”
On Leap Day 2020, Toyaii Rutherford of Penn Hills welcomed daughter Nyla Allen, born on her due date (another rarity; only five percent of babies are born on their due date). Rutherford told WTAE the family would celebrate her daughter’s birthday on Feb. 28 and during Leap Years, “we would also celebrate on the 29th. So that year, she would have two birthdays.”
Ambrose and Lavezoli say that if you ask around many families have a story about a special birth date. Ambrose’s own son was born on Christmas Eve — “not what I [would] have picked, but that’s what the schedule worked out to be” — and her family now celebrates with a birthday tree alongside a Christmas tree.
As much as families try to plan for a particular day, “those babies will decide on their own and then we just live in their world,” Lavezoli says. Ambrose adds that the first leapling born this Feb. 29 could have a parent who went into labor and entered the hospital two days before.
“What we try to do as a team is to make it the most special day for that family regardless of what day it falls on,” Ambrose tells CP. “So [today] just gives us an additional reason to celebrate.”
Leap Day isn't a holiday, but for babies born at Magee, it's still a reason to celebrate
