Two twin sisters say it's "surreal" that they gave birth to their babies on the same day and in the same hospital.
Identical twins Rachel Schmidtberger and Lindsey Denny told ABC News they've done nearly everything in life together since childhood. The 37-year-old dermatologists not only attended college and medical school together but also completed the same residencies and now work in the same field, both of them practicing at Texas Dermatology Specialists in Katy, Texas.
As Schmidtberger put it, for both sisters to give birth on Aug. 26, just about 12 hours apart on the same hospital floor, felt “very, very special.”
"We've done everything together in life, but this is, like, on a different level," Schmidtberger said.
Schmidtberger delivered first at 5:36 a.m. at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, welcoming her second child with husband Michael Hamilton, a baby they named Owen Michael Hamilton.
Denny was admitted later that day and gave birth at 5:27 p.m., welcoming Hayes Michael Denny, her first child with husband Jared Denny.
"We were literally with each other through every step of the process," said Denny. "Through it all, as hard as it's all been, it feels like really, really worth it and kind of like the way it was supposed to happen."
For the Dennys, baby Hayes' arrival was especially sweet: The couple had struggled with infertility and previously underwent in vitro fertilization and fertility treatments without success.
"It's been a really good past year after a couple of really, really, really tough years," Lindsey Denny told ABC News. "We had been trying for almost a year unsuccessfully, and so we had done a couple rounds of IVF and some embryo transfer, and that failed."
Last December, the Dennys found out they were expecting, without the help of any fertility treatments, which Lindsey Denny described as "the biggest surprise ever."
The shock didn't end there, however. Denny said her twin sister, who was already a mom of a 1-year-old daughter, soon called her with more surprising news.
"Rachel called me the day after [I found out I was pregnant] and said, 'You're not going to believe this, but I think I'm pregnant too,' and it was just pretty shocking," Denny recalled.
"When we found out we had the same due date [of Sept. 1], all we could talk about was how we'll give birth on the same day, and they'll have the same birthday,” Schmidtberger added.
Denny and Schmidtberger also shared the same OB-GYN, Dr. Sharon Vila-Wright of Aurora Gonzalez & Associates, who told ABC News it's the first time in her career she has helped to deliver two twin sisters' children on the same day.
"The coincidences kind of kept piling on," Vila-Wright said. "There are so many variables that go into when and how a woman delivers a baby, and just the amount of things that lined up for this to happen … I mean, you know, that level of coincidence is just unbelievable."
Vila-Wright said Schmidtberger needed to be induced for medical reasons, and Denny's water happened to break around the same time. She said when hospital staff alerted her the sisters were both going to deliver at the same time, she was excited for both families.
"The whole labor floor was cheering for them. The whole labor floor was hoping that it would all kind of work out and line out the way that it did. So it was really great," Vila-Wright said.
Aside from being cousins, baby Hayes and baby Owen are also genetically half-siblings.
"Since the moms are identical twins, then [the infants are] getting half of their DNA from a similar DNA set," Vila-Wright explained.
Both families say they're excited to see their sons grow up and hope they share a close bond.
"I'm excited for the boys, because they're going to be so close because they're going to have the same birthday … and then Lindsey and Rachel have the same birthday too. So it can be a lot of combined birthdays," said Hamilton. "It's pretty cool."
Added Jared Denny, "[Hayes] getting to share everything, obviously, with his half-brother Owen, born on the same day, is just the icing on top."
