Pennsylvania Sisters Give Birth 22 Hours Apart

Courtesy Brigid Bink(NEW YORK) — Two Pennsylvania sisters who found out they were pregnant just days apart and shared the same due date say they think their sons will be “best buds” after being born just 22 hours apart.

The two boys, Jack Bink and Owen Whitaker, will celebrate different birthdays — Jack on Sept. 10 and Owen on Sept. 11 — but that is about the only thing that marks a difference in the way they entered the world.

Jack’s mom, Brigid Bink, 31, of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, announced to her family just after Christmas last year that she and her husband, Lee, were expecting their first child, and the first grandchild on both sides.

Three days later, Bink was in her kitchen cooking when her sister, Owen’s mom, Emily Whitaker, 27, knocked on her door and told her that she had taken a pregnancy test and she and her husband, Colin, were pregnant too.

“She said, ‘You’re never going to believe this,’” Bink recalled to ABC News. “She was in disbelief.”

The sisters, who live 10 minutes apart, then found out they shared the same due date, Sept. 15.

Whitaker, a teacher, and Bink, who works in marketing, went through their pregnancies together, sharing the bad, like surprising side effects, and the good, such as maternity clothing sales.

“It was so nice to be able to pick up the phone and call her and say, ‘Did this happen to you?’ or, ‘Is this normal?’ or, ‘I found this great maternity dress on sale,’” Bink said.

Their closeness remained through the end of their pregnancies, when they each went into labor almost exactly one day apart, and both a few days ahead of their due date.

“I went into labor Tuesday night around 11:30 p.m., and she went in the next day at almost the same time,” Bink said. “We were down the hall from each other and the nurses would come in and give us reports on each other.”

After Bink delivered her son, Jack, at 7:34 a.m., on Sept. 10, she got updates via text from her brother-in-law on her sister’s status.

Though the sisters had shared everything together during their nine months of pregnancy, they got one last surprise when Whitaker gave birth at 5:30 a.m. the next morning and discovered she, too, had a boy, Owen.

“Neither of us knew the sex of our baby,” Bink said. “She called me in the morning and we were both hysterical. We thought one of us would have a boy and one would have a girl.”

“When we found out they were both boys, you just keep thinking of the future and them going to school together and playing together,” she said. “I just think they’re going to be best buds.”

Now the sisters, whose birth story was first reported by ABC News affiliate WPVI, are both home from the hospital and sharing their sons’ futures together.

“Our sons share a pediatrician and both went today,” Bink said. “The babies are happy and healthy and we both just feel very lucky.”

Also on top of the world are Bink and Whitaker’s parents, who, in the span of 22 hours, welcomed their first and second grandchildren into the world, and the sisters’ two other siblings, a younger brother and a younger sister.

“I’ve never seen them more happy,” Bink said. “The whole thing has just been surreal.”

“It’s been a great bonding experience for our whole family,” she said.

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