Pamela and Rod Cadenhead of Brandon marveled when their first grandchild was born — and with good reason.
Cade Lee Gardner came into the world on Dec. 18, the same month and date his mother and father, Hillary and Luke Gardner of Baldwyn, did.
“We all talked about how they might share the same birthday after we found out Hillary’s due date was Dec. 19,” said Rod Cadenhead, executive pastor of operations for Pinelake Church, which has locations at the Reservoir and in Madison, Clinton, Starkville and Oxford.
Pamela Cadenheadl, wife of Rod Cadenhead, just knew Cade would be born on his parents’ birthday.
“I just felt it was going to happen on that date,” she said. “I think it’s pretty neat.”
Just in case you’re wondering, Cade appeared on his own volition. There was no induction of labor, no planned C-section.
“This was totally natural,” said Hillary Gardner, 27, a graduate of Northwest Rankin High School and Mississippi State University who has worked as a real estate agent and is now a full-time mother.
Hillary Gardner, whose best friend as a child was also born on Dec. 18, said that near her due date her obstetrician doubted there would be a birthday trifecta.
Hillary Gardner took matters into her own hands and decided on Dec. 17 that a long walk might encourage labor to begin — and it did.
Weighing 8 pounds, 1 ounce and measuring 20 inches long, Cade was born on Dec. 18 at 10:01 a.m. at Women’s Hospital in Tupelo. Luke Gardner, who grew up in Smithville, graduated from MSU and serves as children’s, evangelism and outreach pastor at First Baptist Church of Baldwyn, was also born there.
Cade resembles his mother in facial features and has his father’s hair, Hillary Gardner said.
The baby’s first name, Cade, is taken from Hillary Gardner’s maiden name, Cadenhead, and his middle name, Lee, is from Luke Gardner’s deceased father, Lee Gardner, who was pastor at Smithville Baptist Church for more than a decade.
Ken Thompson, institutional researcher at Millsaps College in Jackson who teaches a class in elementary statistics, said it is very unlikely for a mother, father and their child to share the same birth date.
“There are lots of variables at play,” he said. “To make it as simple as possible, let’s say that the distribution of birthdays throughout the year is uniform, that people are equally likely to be born on any given day of the year. This isn’t necessarily a true assumption, but it makes the interpretation much easier. I don’t know what the true distribution would be — babies are not likely to be conceived uniformly throughout the year — and let’s ignore leap years, which brings another level of complexity.
“Given these ideal situations, the probability that a person is born on any given day of the year is 1/365, regardless of the day. The probability of being born on Dec. 18 is 1/365 for the mother, the father, and the son.
“The probability of three independent events would be the product of the three probabilities. Thus, the probability of mom born on Dec. 18 and the probability of dad born on Dec. 18 and the probability of their son being born on Dec. 18 is (1/365)(1/365)(1/365), which is 0.000000021.”
Wondering what plans the Gardners have for celebrating their joint birthdays?
In the past, Hillary and Luke Gardner have visited retailers who give out free things to people on their birthdays, but Hillary Gardner expects that will change as Cade grows older.
“We’ll be more about his birthday and less about ours,” she said.
