What It’s Really Like to Be a Leap Day Baby

I‘ll never forget the day I turned four, because it was my 1st birthday. Yes, you probably solved my real-life brain teaser. I’m a Leap Day Baby.

When my mom was pregnant with me in 1984, my cousin kept insisting I would be born on Leap Day. I surely hope not, responded my mom at each family February birthday celebration (my mom’s is February 8, my grandfather’s is February 14, and my grandmother’s is February 27). The doctor, who in hindsight probably got the date wrong, had told her I was due early February. Then, late in the evening on Wednesday, February 29, I was almost born in the car.

My parents barely arrived at the hospital on time and after a very quick labor I was delivered at 11:11 pm. There was no stalling delivery as much as my mom may have wanted to — I was destined to be a Leap Day Baby.

My mom painfully recalls February of 1987 when I was about to turn 3 years old. Toddlers tend to get fixated on things, and apparently I was fixated on the fact that there was no 29 on the calendar. I kept pointing to the 28th asking if that was my birthday. No, she would respond, and would point to the blank date adjacent to it. Little Anne did not like that response and kept pressing the issue, hoping for another answer. My sweet mom even drew in a cake and the number 29 on the blank day, but I was not fooled, and decided I had been dealt one of life’s unfair hands.

That is until my fourth birthday, which was actually my first real birthday. I think birthdays peak at the ages of 3 and 4 — lots of excitement and minimal expectations. On February 29 that year, I felt like a bona fide celebrity. We had a party with a heart-shaped pink birthday cake and every relative I ever had, many I hadn’t even met before, called me on the phone to wish me a happy birthday. I vividly remember being allowed to stay up late, donning a very 80s-pastel teddy bear nightgown I had received as a present, answering phone calls from my admirers.

It was then I realized how special being born on Leap Day was.

The Odds of Being a Leap Day Baby

It certainly is rare. The odds of being born on Leap Day are one in 1,461, if you assume birthdays are evenly distributed throughout the year, as the odds of being born on another day are one in 365, for Leap Day it is four times that number plus an extra one. So maybe about .007 percent of the population has a birthday like mine.

We have leap days because it takes 364.2422 days for earth to complete a revolution around the sun. So each 365-day-year is a quarter of a day short of the orbit, hence the extra day every four years (although leap years divisible by 100 are skipped unless they are also divisible by 400).

In my experience, Leap Day irks statisticians. In fact, in my large entry-level statistics class at the University of Virginia, on the first day the professor excitedly wanted to play a game about birthday odds to prove that undoubtedly two people in the room would share a birthday. When I told her about my birthday, she told me I would be left out of the game, that my birthday just didn’t count and would throw off the odds.

But being a Leap Day baby has its upsides. For one, you always have an interesting fact that receives a lot of wonderment when playing those awkward icebreaker games at summer camp or a company bonding retreat. Everyone likes to joke that you are a child prodigy, that you seem mature for your age, or that you are forever young, found the fountain of youth, etc. Once you get older, you realize maybe it is kinda nice to have a reason not to celebrate every year.

On the flip side, many people remember your birthday when it actually happens and want to celebrate you when the day does appear on the calendar. This year, it falls on a Saturday, which hasn’t happened since I was 8 and won’t happen again until I’m 64.

Pressing Leapling Questions

I always receive a lot of questions about what it is like to be born on Leap Day, especially every four years from expecting mothers due in February, so thought I’d answer them for you.

When do you celebrate?

February 28, in low-key fashion. I have known several other Leap Day babies — at my elementary school in my tiny one-stoplight town in Virginia, one other student in my class, the librarian, and the principal all were born on Leap Day — and all of us celebrate on February 28th in off-years, since it is the last day in February, and being a March baby is just a whole other thing.

Some Leap Day babies celebrate on both February 28 and March 1 and supposedly some Leap Day babies celebrate on March 1, but I have yet to meet them. A few friends and my brother always cutely try to wish me a happy birthday at 11:59 pm/midnight between the two days.

Are there administrative headaches?

I have not really experienced these personally, but know some fellow Leaplings who encountered computer systems that weren’t sophisticated enough to recognize the date. Sometimes people don’t believe my birthdate and more than a few times a bouncer thought my ID was fake because he didn’t believe the 29th existed.

I sometimes don’t get the emailed freebies that retailers offer because my birthday doesn’t exist that year. But then, there are a lot of freebies that are given to Leap Day babies when the day does exist though that aren’t offered to people with other birthdays. Facebook took a while to get with the program, some years it would say my birthday was Feb 28, other years it would say on Feb 28 that it was coming up with nothing on March 1.

What happens when you turn 21?

Sadly, it is true, you do not legally turn 21 on February 28, the day you want to celebrate. Thankfully, my local bar (which shall go unnamed to protect its identity) in Charlottesville, Virginia took pity on me and let me in to celebrate that evening. The guitar player insisted he didn’t know happy birthday so he sang me Johnny Cash‘s “Ring of Fire” at my request at midnight.

Do Leap Day babies share a bond?

Some do. I’m in a Facebook group called The Honor Society of Leap Day Babies and they have actually organized a cruise this year for fellow Leaplings, but that is just not my scene. I have a few friends from college with the same birthday, and we always send each other well wishes, but there isn’t a bond that extends beyond that.

Do you like being born on Leap Day?

Yes! But I wouldn’t really recommend it if you have a choice. In fact, four years ago I was 8 months pregnant with my first child and honestly just had an extremely mellow actual birthday (my husband and I had dinner and soufflé at Tony’s) since I didn’t want to have two Leaplings in the family.

What I do love about Leap Day is that it helps me look at my life in four year increments. Four years ago, I had no children. Now, I have two. Four years before that, I was a newlywed living in New York, working at Rolling Stone. Four years before, that I was a young, (not so) wild and free New Yorker who threw a big birthday bash at a hot new nightclub in SoHo (I’m pretty sure Josh Hartnett even made a cameo).

Feel free to wish me a happy 9th birthday on Saturday, February 29, it would make my once-every-four-years day! Just please don’t give me any crayons, I’m in my thirties, after all.