This Sunset Park family is growing by leaps and bounds!
Lindsay and Dane Demchak were all set to throw a birthday party Saturday for their son Omri, who was born Feb. 29, 2016, the last Leap Year.
But that soiree was put on hold when the 31-year-old stay-at-home mom unexpectedly gave birth Saturday morning, four days early, to a 7-pound, 2-ounce baby girl at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn.
We’re the double Leap Year family! a beaming Lindsay Demchak boasted from her hospital bed as she cradled a swaddled Scout on her right arm.
We don’t believe in superstition. We are thankful to God, a beaming Dane Demchak, 31, said.
I guess He God thought it would be funny, Lindsay quipped.
My parents can’t believe it. My brother called and said, You gotta go on ‘Ellen.’ This is unreal, Dane, a coffee roaster and community activist said.
Omri’s due date was Feb. 29, 2016. The couple, knowing it was Leap Day, joked at the time that there was “no way” he would be born on Feb. 29. Omri was indeed born that day at 1 p.m. at Maimonides Hospital in Borough Park, Brooklyn.
We joked about it. What if it happens again? Dane recalled. And then it did! It’s crazy. It still hasn’t set in. We’re very ecstatic,” he said.
The Demchaks and Lindsay’s parents went out to Gino’s restaurant in Bay Ridge Friday night to celebrate the birthday of Lindsay’s mom.
After returning home from a chicken parm dinner, the couple put their son to bed, put up decorations for Omri’s party and readied for bed.
However, Scout would have none of that. Lindsay started experiencing contractions shortly after midnight.
“Dang that Italian food!” Lindsay told her husband, adding, “I can’t believe this is happening!”
She then started texting friends.
After 7 hours in labor, Lindsay, who just turned 31 on Feb. 26, gave birth at 7:42 a.m. to Scout, who measured 19 inches long.
As for Omri? He couldn’t be happier to have a baby sister and was already doting on his newly-minted sibling at the hospital Saturday afternoon.
Omri woke up at 5 am, he saw the decorations and got very excited for his birthday, and the couple said “You might have a very special gift for your birthday.”
“His day got taken from him. But he’s very easy going. He’s very excited about the baby,” dad Dane said.
The Demchaks, who have no plans to play the lottery, will have a “low key” birthday for Omri on Sunday, “but he’ll still be getting cake.”
Dane Demchak believes the last back-to-back Leap Year birth was in 1960.
As for the future?
The Demchaks plan to do the children’s birthdays on two consecutive days, son Omri on Feb. 28, and daughter Scout on March 1.
Every Leap Year they’ll hold a “joint celebration,” Dane said, adding, “We joked with him, Omri you’re turning one today.”
In addition to Scout, Coney Island Hospital reported three other Leap Year babies: Eva Ponce, 39, gave birth to twin boys, not yet named, at 8:17 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. The babies weighing 5 pounds, 11 ounces and 5 pounds, 9 ounces respectively, were due on March 28. Eva went into labor and had to have a C-section because one of the babies was breached.
Also, at 8:14 a.m., Socorro Edith Tiempos, 28, of Coney Island, gave birth after 12 hours in labor to Kimberly Sanchez, who weighed in at 6 pounds, 13 ounces. Kimberly, who was due March 7, arrived via natural birth.
Over at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, Naomi Kahn, 26 and Alec Mazliach, 28, of the Lower East Side in Manhattan welcomed their son who was born at 7:20 a.m. Weighing in at 7 pounds, 3 ounces, the baby will be named eight days from now after circumcision per Jewish tradition.
The odds of being born on Leap Day are 1 in 1,461, according to pregnantchicken.com.
Leaplings share their birthday with about 5 million other people, with the rest of the population sharing their special day with almost 21 million people.
Robin Pemantle, a University of Pennsylvania professor of mathematics, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the probability of what the Demchaks experienced is about 1 in 2.1 million.
Leap Day, Feb. 29, is the extra day tacked onto the calendar once every four years as a corrective measure to accommodate the time it takes the Earth to complete a single revolution around the sun.