February 29, 2016
Is being born on Leap Day a blessing or a curse? You only get to celebrate your birthday every four years, but when you do, it's really awesome. You don't get to drink until 84 years after you're born, but, on the other hand, you can still get the children's discount at the movies for decades.
Whatever your personal views are, data on U.S. births seems to show that Leap Day discrimination is a real phenomenon. As FiveThirtyEight reported, there were 15 percent fewer C-section deliveries than expected on Leap Days from 2000 to 2012. When parents get the chance to schedule their baby's birth, a whole lot of them seem to want to leap right into March.
Philadelphia-area mom Noel Ziegler admitted to FiveThirtyEight that she was "100 percent" against having her kid born on a Leap Day eight years ago, but nature didn't care what she thought. Her son Thomas gets to celebrate his second second birthday on Monday (the other birthday was in 2010, if you count non-leap birthdays).
“I’m actually glad things panned out the way that they did. We wouldn’t change it for the world,” she told the website.
