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Leaping Lizards! Leap Day mom has Leap Day baby

Weehawken's Michelle Birnbaum should have some advice for her newborn daughter about having to wait four years between birthdays.

Rose Madelyn Birnbaum arrived Friday - Leap Day - at 11 a.m. at Englewood Hospital - 28 years to the day after her mother was born.

That means the child must wait until 2012 before celebrating her first exact birthday. By that time, mom will be 8 or 32, depending on who's counting.

Birnbaum, a Weehawken lawyer, and her husband Jaeson Birnbaum were hoping the child would arrive Friday. They even considered inducing, but little Rose arrived all on her own.

The odds of being born on the rarest day are about one in 1,460. The odds of a Leap-Day baby growing up and having a Leap-Day baby of his or her own are, well, pretty slim.

But it has happened before.

Peter Anthony Keogh of Ireland was born on Feb. 29, 1940. His son, Peter Eric Keogh was born on the same date in 1964. And his granddaughter, Bethany Wealth, arrived on Leap Day 1996.

The Henriksen family of Norway boasts three Leap Day siblings: Heidi, 1960; Olav, 1964; and Leif Martin, 1968.

In America, roughly 200,000 people claim Feb. 29 as their birthday, according to census figures.

Some are famous.

The late big-band singer Dinah Shore was born on Feb. 29. So was Ja Rule, the rapper and actor, and Superman - at least according to the comic book.

Leap Day has also hosted a few noteworthy events. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the Communist Manifesto on Feb. 29, 1848. Hugh Hefner opened his first Playboy Club in Chicago on Feb. 29, 1960.

And now Feb. 29 is the birthday of Weehawken's own Rose Madelyn Birnbaum.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.