US couple who share birthdays give birth to twins on same day

A US couple who share the same birthday gave birth to twin babies on their shared birthday this month, surpassing odds even higher than being struck by lightning.

Scierra Blair, 32, and her fiance Jose Ervin Jr, 31, residents of Ohio in the United States, were born a year apart from each other on 18 August and were looking forward to her due date just a couple of weeks after their mutual birthday, reports The Guardian.

However, their plans changed when Blair was informed by a doctor on 17 August that one of the twins was positioned in bottom-down orientation in her uterus known as a breech position, an uncommon situation considering the late  stage of her pregnancy. Subsequently, Blair received advice that the safest approach for delivering the twins would be via a caesarean section surgery.

Around 4:30pm on 17 August, Blair reached Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest hospital for the scheduled procedure. As the realisation dawned that their birthdays were just a few hours away, Ervin inquired with the attending medical team about the safety of postponing Blair's C-section until after midnight.

The medical staff assured that there was no specific danger in postponing the C-section for a few hours. So Ervin appealed to 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 about the future birthday parties he was looking forward to at the time the couple made the decision.

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?'"

"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.'"

However, Blair eventually gave in when Ervin's mother also implored her to wait. "I agreed, but I told them they owed me a week of potato salad," Blair told People magazine.

Jose Ervin III was born at 12:35am, coinciding with his parents' birthday, closely followed by his younger sister A-ria just a minute later. Both twins weighed slightly over 5 pounds each.

Dr Jeniffer Eaton, chairperson of the obstetrics and gynaecology department at Cleveland Clinic Hillcrest, told the Guardian, "It's extremely rare for both parents and their newborn twins to share the exact same birthday."

Several hospitals have cited the likelihood of a child sharing a birthday with both parents at approximately 1 in 133,000. This implies that both Blair and Ervin Jr faced significantly better odds of being struck by lightning – around 1 in 15,300 – than having a twin on their joint birthday.