A mother born on Leap Day 40 years ago was thrilled to have her third child on Thursday, which also happens to be Leap Day. Dr Kai Sun and her husband Michael Paik, welcomed their daughter whom they named Chloe at 5:12 a.m. on February 29. Dr Sun, a rheumatologist and the assistant professor of medicine at Duke Health, in North Carolina USA, was born in 1984, which was also a leap like 2024. Baby Chloe was born three days after her estimated due date of February 26.
Talking about having a happy co-incidence of sharing a leap-year birthday with her newborn, Dr Sun told Good Morning America, “My husband and I were just saying how cool it would be if she were born on the same day as my birthday. And somehow, it happened.” What makes Chloe’s birth even more special is that she is a rainbow baby.
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Sun spoke about her pregnancy complications and said, “We had a miscarriage almost exactly a year ago and so that makes her more special. There were some little things along the way. There were some abnormal findings on the initial ultrasound that we were nervous about. And then I had COVID. And I fell on my belly in my third trimester. There are just some small things that happened that made us a little nervous but everything turned out well at the end.” Dr Sun added that she is excited to introduce Chloe to her older siblings, Charis who is five and Caleb who is three.
People born on February 29 are fondly known as “leaplings” or “leapers”. Since they have their actual birth date, February 29 every once in four years, some leap year borns celebrate their birthday on either February 28 or March 1. It is believed that leaplings born before noon on February 29 celebrate on February 28, while those born after noon celebrate their birthday on March 1.
As per some estimates by the Associated Press, about 5 million people worldwide were born on a leap day. This means 0.1 per cent of the world’s population is born on Leap Day. There is a rare 1 in 1461 chance of someone being born on February 29.
Morarji Desai, the former Indian prime minister was a leapling. The freedom fighter was born on February 29, 1896. Legendary Bharatanatyam dancer Rukmani Devi was also a leap-year baby. She was born on February 29, 1904.
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