Local twin sisters deliver baby girls less than 24 hours apart
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IDAH FALLS — Local twin sisters are reminiscing on the unique experience they had delivering their babies a little over a week ago.
Reagan Heald and Kenadee Bowcutt are 20-year-olds who live in Arco. They are used to doing things together, like having their tonsils removed and getting braces put on the same day, but they never imagined they’d also deliver their first babies about 16 hours apart and only four doors down from each other at Mountain View Hospital.
The Heald family welcomed their daughter named Hazel on Jan. 7 at 8:44 p.m., and the following day, the Bowcutts had their daughter Olive at 1:20 p.m.
“It’s something that sisters don’t really get to experience together,” Reagan told EastIdahoNews.com. “(Kenadee) was super helpful. I think for our husbands too, to have that comfort of each other … to have the family (helped).”
The sisters didn’t plan to get pregnant at the same time. In fact, Kenadee found out she was expecting a few weeks before Reagan. Not long after, Kenadee had a dream about her delivery day.
“I had a dream that I was in the hospital in a wheelchair, and I was pushed into a room and my twin sister was sitting there holding a baby,” Kenadee remembers. “I called her out of the blue and said, ‘Are you pregnant?’ She said, ‘I haven’t told anyone.’ I was like, ‘I had a dream’ and I told her about it.”
They announced that they were both expecting on the Fourth of July with Kenadee’s due date set for Jan. 12 and Reagan due Jan. 14. But on Jan. 7, Reagan started dilating and was admitted to the hospital that morning.
Kenadee, who was in town for a doctor’s appointment, started having contractions and knew she’d be following in her sister’s footsteps. She called her husband and told him to grab the hospital bags.
“By 8:30 p.m. I was in my own room and right after I got there, I got a text from my brother-in-law saying the baby was born,” Kenadee says.
She asked the nurses if she could see her twin sister and new niece. Kenadee says the nurses had no idea they were sisters until she told them.
“We were the first ones to see each other’s babies,” Reagan recalls. “The hospital was so cool about it.”
Reagan says both Hazel and Olive were born with lots of hair and measured similar in size. They were 19 inches long and Hazel weighed six pounds 4.5 ounces and Olive was six pounds 4.2 ounces.
“My parents and my grandparents, when we brought them home, they’re like, ‘They look more like twins than you guys do,'” Kenadee mentioned.
Reagan and Kenadee are glad to not only have healthy babies, but a story to tell for years to come.
“I had a lot of comfort knowing that we were both there and that we were close to each other,” Kenadee says. “I am so grateful for the opportunity to be able to go through that and have her there in the hospital with me.”
