‘We can do one big celebration’: Ohio couple shares birthday with new twins | Ohio

A couple in Cleveland overcame odds that are much higher than those confronting people struck by lightning to have twin babies on their shared birthday this month.

Scierra Blair, 32, and her fiance Jose Ervin Jr, 31, were born a year apart from each other on 18 August and were looking forward to her due date a couple of weeks after their joint birthday, according to multiple media reports.

Those plans changed when Blair learned from a doctor on 17 August that one of the twins whom she was expecting was lying bottom-down in her uterus – a breech position, which was unusual given how late she was in her pregnancy. Blair was informed that it would be safest for her to deliver the twins through a caesarean section surgery.

It was about 4.30pm when Blair arrived at Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest hospital for the procedure. Realizing that they were only a few hours away from ringing in their birthdays, Ervin asked the staff caring for Blair whether it would be safe for her to wait until after midnight to undergo the C-section.

The staff indicated that there was no risk in particular to delaying the C-section some hours. So Ervin pleaded for Blair to wait until they “all got the same birthday”, he told the local news station WOIO.

“We can just do one big celebration, do it all at one time, and that would be beautiful,” Ervin told People magazine of the future birthday parties he envisioned at the time the couple made the decision.

Suggesting that he was already anticipating the loads of cake, birthday singing and presents at their simultaneous parties, Ervin added: “Since she was in good health and wasn’t stressed, and the kids were in good health and weren’t stressed, I thought, ‘Why not wait?’”

Blair told People that she was not thrilled with Ervin’s request. She couldn’t eat prior to the surgery and described herself as “hangry” – a portmanteau of “hungry” and “angry”.

“I … just wanted it to be over,” Blair reportedly said. “He said, ‘It’s only a few hours and it will go by real fast.’ And I just looked at him and said, ‘Easy for you to say. I’m starving.’”

Blair, though, said she relented after Ervin’s mother also pleaded for her to wait. “I agreed, but I told them they owed me a week of potato salad,” Blair remarked to People.

Jose Ervin III was born at 12.35am on his parents’ birthday. His little sister A-ria was born a minute later. Each of the twins tilted the weight scales at a little more than 5lbs each.

In a statement to the Guardian, Dr Jeniffer Eaton – the chairperson of Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest’s obstetrics and gynecology department – confirmed, “It’s extremely rare for both parents and their newborn twins to all share the same birthday.”

Multiple hospitals have said that the odds of a child sharing a birthday with both parents is about 1-in-133,000. Meanwhile, the US Centers for Disease Control estimates that there are only about 31 twins delivered every 1,000 live births.

That means that Blair and Ervin Jr each had much better odds to be struck by lightning – about 1 in 15,300 – than to experience what they did on their most recent birthday.

As Ervin put it to People, “It’s a blessing – best birthday present ever.”