Published in the Quad-City Times on Feb. 29, 2024

Here’s a riddle for you: Barbara Ellingsworth is celebrating her 11th birthday this year. Her daughter is 18 years old. How is this possible?

The answer? Ellingsworth, like many other Quad-Citians that reached out to the Quad-City Times/Dispatch-Argus this week, was born on Feb. 29.

Statistically, she’s got the least likely birthday out there. Because Leap Day only occurs once every four years, people born on Feb. 29 only get to celebrate their true birthday once every four years, too. 

But the Leap Day babies we talked to were pretty nonchalant about the experience. In non-Leap Years, some celebrate on Feb. 28, others celebrate on March 1. Some just celebrate on both. 

“I celebrate my birthday every day,” said East Moline’s Kelly Meguffy, a retired 29-year employee at Milan Blacktop.

Meguffy will be celebrating turning 68 this year. He’s been married 48 years and has two adult children, but Meguffy’s still four years from his 18th birthday. 

He said he’s looking forward to celebrating this Leap Day with his neighbors playing card games. Still, he downplayed his birthday’s uniqueness. 

“There’s just as many people born on the 29th as any other day of the year,” he said, and to an extent, he’s right.

According to data aggregated by FiveThirtyEight, tallying up birth rates from 1994 to 2014, an average of 10,462 babies are born on Feb. 29 every Leap Year. Compared to other holidays within that year, that’s a higher average than Christmas, April Fool’s Day and New Year’s Day. 

Though when you tally up the fact that all other birthdays have three extra years to pad their numbers, there’s really no competition. Having a Leap Day birthday — a roughly 1 in 1,500 chance — is less likely than flipping a coin 10 times, and getting heads every single time. 

Some with the Feb. 29 birthday like to relish in their uniqueness.

Ellingsworth has three Leap Day-related T-shirts, a necklace and, this week, her nails are painted with frogs to commemorate her leap. 

On Leap Day in 2020, Ellingsworth joined other Leap Day babies on a cruise to the Bahamas. She swam with dolphins, visited Atlantis — the resort — and connected with other unique birthday celebrators like herself.

She took inspiration from that trip and made a Facebook group for Quad-Cities Leap babies to join and connect. 

“Having that kind of rare birthday, you don’t see as much stuff as other people do,” she said outside a Davenport coffee shop this week, while wearing a colorful tee that boasted, “BORN RARE.”

“I treat it as a fun fact, because I get to tell people I’m 11 and get weird looks.”

Ellingsworth said one struggle of being a Leap Day baby is online drop down menus. Sometimes, she gets error messages saying her birthdate doesn’t exist. 

Davenport-born Leap Day baby Renae Newman turns 12 this year, and has had a unique problem with her birthday, too. Newman said she ran into issues on her long-awaited 21st birthday, having to wait until March 1 to celebrate reaching legal drinking age until March 1.

Other than that, Newman — who has since moved to St. Louis — said being a leap baby is all roses.

“In a way, I will be forever young,” she said, via email. 

St. Ambrose University biology student Emma Peters said this will be her first Leap Year birthday without a long-running celebration. Since she was four years old, celebrating her first birthday, Peters said her family would take her to Disney World to meet the Disney princesses. 

This time around, Peters said she’ll just be in class. In the non-Leap Years, Peters said it’s mostly a normal birthday experience. Though, she does have to field her fair share of hecklers. 

“There are sort of people who are like, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna wish you a happy birthday until you get to your actual birthday,’” she said. 

Peters, who was born-and-raised in Davenport, is hoping to become a physician’s assistant when she wraps up her studies at St. Ambrose. 

Still, she won’t be the only local Leap Day baby in the medical field. Nurse and Moline resident Ashlee Woods was born on Feb. 29, 1984, making this year a big milestone: the double-digit 10 years old. 

“My kids get a kick out of it,” she said. “I have a 12-year-old and an 8-year-old, so I’m older than one and younger than the other one.”

Woods said she’s had a few patients come in with Leap Day birthdays, a miniature bonding moment that can lighten the mood. 

Davis Biddle said the community of those born on Leap Day is a small world — his brother-in-law has the same birthday, too. Biddle, who has three children and runs a family farm in Joy, Illinois, is celebrating his 15th birthday this year. 

By the time his next birthday rolls around in 2028, Biddle will have an even more unique milestone: his grandson, now 12, will have celebrated as many birthdays.

When the next Leap Year rolls around, they’ll both be celebrating their sweet 16. However, during a phone interview on the way to the airport for a birthday vacation this week, Biddle realized what his 16th birthday next Leap Year really means. 

“I’ll be old enough to drive,” he joked without skipping a beat — after all, he’s told that one before.