Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford care team at the Johnson Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Services were leaping with joy as they welcomed 16 babies born on February 29. Babies born on this day are known as “leaplings”, “leapers” or “leapsters” because of the extra day in the month that comes every four years. The odds of being born on Leap Day are estimated to be one in 1,461. On non-leap years, babies usually celebrate on either Feb. 28 or March 1.
Historians say there are about 5 million people around the world who have leap year birthdays. According to Sushant Mahajan, PhD, with the Stanford University Solar – Helioseismic Magnetic Imager science group, leap year exists, in large part, due to the number of times the earth revolves around the sun. “The time it takes for the earth to go around the sun is actually 365.24 days. So, we pocket this extra quarter of a day for four years and issue a correction to the calendar of a whole extra leap day to keep our calendar insync with the earth’s movement around the sun.”
On average, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital delivers 4,500 babies each year, that’s nearly a dozen babies a day. At the last leap year in 2020, the hospital celebrated 10 babies born on Feb. 29.
