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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Jay Legere and Iona Strachan's baby daughter's birthday will only happen every four years.

The Yellowknife couple are the proud parents of the city's only 2012 leap year day baby.

Legere and Strachan greeted baby Aila at around 5:30 a.m. on Feb. 29 at Stanton Territorial Hospital. She was healthy at just over nine pounds. Both mother and baby are recovering at home.

Aila's birth on leap year day is something both parents said they were hoping would happen.

"The doctors originally told us the 22nd, but we always felt it was going to be the 29th," Legere said.

"I was definitely pulling for it."

Strachan said when the contractions started the night before, she started thinking she only had 34 hours to deliver in time.

The delivery went incredibly smooth, Legere said, taking only 45 minutes after their arrival at the hospital. Aila wasn't about to wait around, and medical staff had to be called quickly.

"The doctors and nurses were all very impressed," Strachan said.

The couple said they had a bit difficulty choosing a name. Strachan is of Scottish heritage and her sister's name is Isla.

She said they wanted to pay homage to that, but eventually decided to settle on a slightly different spelling. Aila's name refers to a couple nationalities.

The name is popular in Finland. Legere and Strachan are from Labrador originally, and while they've never been to Finland themselves, they felt they wanted to pay tribute to Northern cultures.

"'Ai' forms an 'I' sound in Inuktitut," Legere explained, which is something they liked, but the clincher was when they discovered that Aila means 'bearer of light.'

"It was perfect. We spend a lot of time in the dark up here, so we hope that she'll be a light for us," said Jay.

Being born on a leap year could be considered lucky, but it also has some challenging quirks. How, for example, do you celebrate birthdays when Feb. 29 only falls every fourth year?

"I actually did a lot of research on that," Strachan said. "Each province and territory has its own regulations about birthdays that fall on a leap year. For the Northwest Territories, it's March 1."

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