New Year Babies Won't Be Sharing A Birthday: Twins Born Minutes Apart But In Separate Years

It’s rare for twins to be born on different days but it’s a one in a million chance they’ll be born in different years.

A set of twins born straddling the minutes between 2015 and 2016 will have a very unique story to tell for the rest of their lives. It’s not every day that twins can claim they were born in different years, but such is life now for the Valencia family and their new babies, Jaelyn and Luis.

Maribel Valencia had a c-section scheduled for January 6th, so you can imagine her and husband Luis’ surprise when she went into labor on New Year’s Eve. Luis tells NBC News San Diego of their excitement once they realized Maribel would likely be having New Year’s babies. “We were actually watching the clock. We wanted to see if we were one of the first ones.”

They were indeed the first and also, the last. Born at San Diego Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center, the twins are a pretty special pair. Baby girl Jaelyn, having made her debut at 11:59 pm on December 31st, is probably the last baby born in San Diego County in 2015. Her “younger” brother Luis is likely the first San Diego Country baby born in 2016 having entered the world at 12:02 am on January 1st. Talk about a fun birth story. And also, kind of a pain in the ass for a number of reasons.

Now, the Valencia family can only claim one of the babies on their 2015 taxes. Not the worst thing in the world, but sort of annoying. They have twins with separate birthdays and of course, as the little ones grow older, they will each want their own day recognized. Welcome to a life of parties two days in a row and each kid wanting the spotlight for a solid 24 hours, as they should.

This is all aside from the fact that the babies have birthdays surrounding a major holiday and only a week after Christmas as well. As a mid-December baby myself, I know how it is to have all your presents at once and while it can be kind of exciting to celebrate your birthday amid everyone else’s holiday happiness, it does sort of suck to not have much else to look forward to the rest of the year.

All these issues are small, logistical pains in the rear that don’t really mean anything in the grand scheme. In an ideal world, it would be preferable for twins to share a birthday, but life is not always ideal. The babies were born healthy and their parents are happy. In the end, that’s all that matters.