As the world was preparing to welcome in 2022, Fatima Madrigal had just given birth to her newborn son, Alfredo Antonio Trujillo, at 11:45 p.m. Then 15 minutes later, as the clock struck midnight, his little twin sister Aylin arrived.
The twins, who were due on January 16, were thankfully both healthy, with Alfredo weighing 6 pounds, 1 ounce and his little sister 5 pounds and 14 ounces.
By straddling midnight, the twins were not only born on different days, and months — which can happen occasionally with twins — but they’re also born in completely different years, according to a report in Reuters.
The unusual birth came as a “surprise” for new mom, Madrigal:
I was kind of shocked because twins don’t run in my family, nor in my partner’s family. So we were really surprised that we got blessed with two babies …”
The twins will now be settling in with their mommy and daddy, Robert Trujillo, and three older siblings, aged 11, 3, and 1, who were thrilled with their baby brother and sister.
Their mom shared that she intends to celebrate the twins’ birthday on the same day for the years to come — which is pretty practical considering the chaos that comes with so many little ones in a family!
“I’ll explain it to them the best I can. When they’re older, if they want to celebrate their birthdays, like, different years, it’s up to them, but right now that they’re small and they’re with me, they’re going to celebrate their birthday together,” Madrigal explained.
Navidad Medical Center in Salinas, California, where the twins were born, shared that ordinarily 120,000 twins are born every year in the USA. While its rare for twins to have different birthdays, they calculate that the chances of having twins born in a different year are one in 2 million.