Eastern Iowa families enjoy sharing birthdays with relatives

Lois Gray didn't have time to buy her wife a birthday present 14 years ago.

She was too busy giving birth to their second daughter, Lauren.

Gray's due date wasn't Karen Gray's June 9 birthday. Lauren was supposed to arrive June 2.

“If she had arrived early, she could have been born on my birthday – May 15,” Gray of Iowa City says.

Instead, Lauren was late. When Gray realized that meant mother and daughter would share a birthday, she couldn't imagine anything better.

“It felt like this beautiful, wonderful gift,” Gray says. “It was the best gift I could give Karen.”

Shared birthdays among non-multiple family members aren't common, but they're not unheard of, either.

“The chances of shared birthdays depend on the number of people being considered,” says Ashley Carter, an assistant professor of statistics at California State University Long Beach.

A family with only one child has a 1/365 chance to share his or her birthday with one parent or a 2/365 chance with either parent.

“If there are two kids, each has a chance to share with both parents so the chances go up to 1.1 percent and so on,” Carter says. “The probabilities of sharing birthdays depend mainly on how many people are involved.”

In other words, the bigger the family, the better the chances two, or more, family members will share a birthday.

Rose Miller's June 19 birthday is a popular date in her family.

“My sister was born on my third birthday,” the Cedar Rapids woman says. “She was my third birthday present.”

Years later, Miller would share her birthday again, this time with her oldest nephew, Mark Miller.

Then, in 1999, it happened a third time. Miller's daughter, Janelle Steichen, gave birth to her daughter, Harli, on Miller's birthday.

“People are always surprised my granddaughter and I share a birthday,” Miller says. “They ask, ‘How did that happen?' and there's no answer for it. It just happens and it's wonderful.”

Staci Siddell, also of Cedar Rapids, agrees, but it took some time for her to appreciate the uniqueness of a shared birthday.

Siddell's daughter, Ellie, was born on Sept 14. Ellie shares her birthday with her twin uncles and twin second cousins – Siddell's brothers and first cousins, respectively.

“At first, I didn't want her to have the same birthday,” Siddell says. “I wanted her to have her own special day.”

But Ellie had other plans, arriving three days early. And mom is OK with it.

“It is pretty rare and unique to have so many people born on the same day,” Siddell says.