It’s a special delivery for Breslau family as baby Bob arrives on leap year day
Bob’s due date was on Feb. 19, but he opted instead to arrive 10 days later on the unusual date
Little Bob Kharytoniuk was in no hurry to be born, but when he did arrive, he did so in style.
Bob was born at 1:37 a.m. on Thursday at Cambridge Memorial Hospital, making his birthday an unusual one: he’s one of a special crop of newborns — leap year babies whose birthday falls on a date that only comes around once every four years.
His due date was actually on Feb. 19, but he opted instead to arrive 10 days later on the unusual date.
“We don’t know anyone with a birthday on that day, so it’s something special, that’s for sure,” said his mother Yuliia, 29.
When it became clear the baby wasn’t going to arrive on the due date, the expectant father, Andrii, had joked that the birth should be induced to occur on Feb. 29.
But forcing that date wouldn’t have had the same charm as Bob himself choosing the date, Yuliia said. “That’s much nicer.”
The parents arrived at the hospital shortly after midnight, and Bob was born about 90 minutes later after an uneventful labour, weighing in at almost 3,800 grams, or eight pounds, four ounces.
Bob is a younger brother to Mike, who is almost two.
Yuliia, who was relieved that labour didn’t drag on for hours, didn’t sleep afterwards, spending quiet time during the night with her newborn as Andrii dozed in a hospital chair. The healthy mother and child were discharged in the morning, and were soon comfortably back at their home in Breslau, where well wishes were pouring in from friends and family, here and from Ukraine, where the couple are from before coming to Canada five years ago.
The family expects they will celebrate Bob’s birthday on March 1 on the years that are not leap years.
Yuliia joked that her son will always be able to boast that he is young. “It’s fun. When he’s 32, he can tell everyone that he’s eight.”
Bob wasn’t the only leap year baby born Thursday in the region. Two others were set to arrive later at Cambridge Memorial, and Grand River Hospital in Kitchener had five “leaplings” by early afternoon.
“I still have five people in labour, so we’re going to have more,” said Judy Carson, the resource nurse in GRH’s childbirth unit.
Roughly every four years, the calendar tacks an extra day at the end of February to compensate for the fact that the Earth’s orbit is slightly longer than 365 days. The extra day ensures that over time, the months keep in sync with the seasons.
Leap Day babies a relatively rare
group: only about five million people worldwide share the leap birthday out of about eight billion people on the planet, which works out to about one in 1,460 people.
“It’s a very rare occurrence,” said CMH spokesperson Stephan Beckoff, noting that Cambridge Memorial has only had five other leaplings in the past decade or so, out of about 1,400 births a year.