In the Lammert family, there is one day each year that is more special than the rest — it's Aug. 25, the day of all four of the Lammert daughters were born. No, they're not quadruplets. Each girl was born on the same day, exactly three years apart.
That's right — Sophia, 9, Giuliana, 6, Mia, 3, and Valentina, 2.5 weeks old — have the exact same birthday.
"I'm still surprised," says their mother, 35-year-old Kristin Lammert of South Carolina. Baby Valentina was due Sept. 25, and arrived a month early on her sisters’ birthday.
One person was not surprised in the least: big sister Sophia.
Kristin captured her oldest daughter on video just days before Valentina's arrival as she wished on a star that her newest sister would arrive on the Lammert sisters' shared birthday (or her due date).
"I wish for a healthy, blessed baby sister on Aug. 25 or Sept. 25," Sophia said in the video, her hands clasped tightly together and her face, eyes closed, turned toward the sky.
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Sophia got her wish. TODAY.com needed to know her secret, so Kristin called Sophia over to the phone.
"I knew she was coming," Sophia says sweetly and definitively. "For every baby sister, I said that she would be coming on Aug. 25, and she came. So it's kind of like I have magic."
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None of the Lammert daughters' births were scheduled C-sections or scheduled inductions, so it's truly chance all four were born on the same day.
The odds of having multiple siblings born on the same day are "extremely rare," Dr. Christine Greves, an OB-GYN at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies, previously told TODAY.com. “The Guinness Book of World Records holder is a family that have five siblings born on the same day and they listed that as being about one in a 17 billion chance.”
Right now, the Lammert family is only one baby away from tying the record.
After being diagnosed with mild preeclampsia 35 weeks into her pregnancy, Kristin was finishing up her last day of work when she realized that her vision was blurry.
"It was fine all the whole morning, until all of a sudden it wasn't," she says.
Kristin worked a few more hours because she wanted to finish training the person who would be taking over her job. (She had decided to stay home with the kids after Valentina was born.) Ultimately, she called her boss, who happens to be her uncle, to tell him what was going on.
"'As your uncle, you need to go take care of yourself,'" Kristin remembers him saying. "'And as your boss, I appreciate your integrity, but you need to go!'"
Even as Kristin left work, she says she was in denial that her daughter was coming. From the experience delivering her three older daughters, Kristin knew that “you have to kind of mentally get in the game, the headspace of that, and I was not there yet.”
Her husband Nick Lammert, 36, tried to convince Kristin to pack a hospital bag, but she remembers thinking that there was no point since they would likely be sent home.
She says, "I just genuinely didn't think that it was happening."
But by the time they reached the hospital on Aug. 23, Kristin's preeclampsia progressed from "mild" to "severe." Kristin and Nick assumed the baby would have to be born within 24 hours, making her birthday Aug. 24. But Valentina had other ideas.
She made her arrival at 8:11am on Aug. 25, at just 5 pounds, 12 ounces.
Valentina didn't need to go to the NICU, "which shocked everyone, including the nurses," says Kristin. In fact, Valentina was officially released from the hospital the very next day — Aug. 26 — but she snuggled up in her mom's hospital room until Kristin was released two days later.
Valentina's birth didn't ruin her older sisters' birthday party plans.
Sophia had been saying that Valentina would be born on Aug. 25 for so long and so often that "it kind of got to me a bit," Kristin says.
Kristin had scheduled their party for the Saturday prior — Aug. 17.
"I wouldn't say I knew, because there was definitely no pre-planning in it whatsoever," Kristin shares, "but I decided to do a whole big party for my girls the weekend before, just in case."
Sophia, Giuliana and Mia ended up spending Aug. 25 with Kristin's parents, who made the day extra special by bringing the girls to the hospital and throwing an impromptu pizza party.
"It was an emotional time, because I felt bad that I couldn't be there" with the girls for a good portion of their birthday. "But obviously there were other plans in the works from up above," Kristin shares.
As for having four daughters with the exact same birthday, Kristin says, "I don't think there's anyone that's more surprised than we are. We get basically five bonus weeks together as a family."
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