Sisters Brandy Meisheid and Allison Sweeney Went Into Labor in Neighboring Rooms at the Same Iowa Hospital, and Their Sons Were Born 29 Minutes Apart

Brandy Meisheid checked into the hospital on Oct. 22 for a scheduled induction. Her sister Allison Sweeney came in the same day for what she thought was a routine appointment, and then her water broke. By that evening the two sisters had each delivered a baby boy in neighboring rooms at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with Meisheid’s son Myles arriving at 5:48 p.m. and his cousin Kohen at 6:17 p.m., CBS2 Iowa reported.

“Almost Thought It Was a Prank”

The sisters were not supposed to be delivering on the same day. Meisheid, whose son Myles was born first, had a due date of Nov. 13. Sweeney’s due date was Halloween. That left about two weeks between them on paper, and neither expected to share a delivery floor.

When the family realized Sweeney was also in labor and delivery, Meisheid told CBS2 they “almost thought it was a prank.” She said they knew the births were going to be close, just not that close.

Meisheid said the sisters had always talked about the idea. “Having a family with four girls, it’s always a lifelong dream to be pregnant together,” she told KCRG, in a report republished by Dakota News Now.

Four Sisters, Four Babies in One Year

Meisheid and Sweeney are two of four sisters, and the timing of their deliveries is only half of the story. All four sisters had babies in 2026. The other two gave birth in June, three days apart, according to CBS2. The family calls the four sisters the “Quad Squad,” KCRG reported.

The family followed the Oct. 22 deliveries through group chats as updates came in from both rooms. Between them, CBS2 reported, the four sisters’ families now count seven boys and one girl.

October was already a crowded month on the family calendar. Six of the family’s 18 birthdays fall in October, CBS2 reported, including Oct. 15, 16, 17 and 28, the last of which belongs to the sisters’ father. Oct. 22 now belongs to Myles and Kohen.

There was one more coincidence. Myles was born in the same birth room as his cousin Merritt, according to CBS2.

A Linn County Supervisor Who Followed Her Father

Meisheid is a public figure in Linn County. She represents District 3 on the Linn County Board of Supervisors, a district that includes Center Point, Coggon, Marion, Mount Vernon, Lisbon and a dozen other communities, according to her county biography. The county says she was elected in November 2024 at age 33, is a fifth-generation Linn County resident and lives in rural Coggon with her husband, Michael, and their sons, Zachary and Weston. She serves as the board’s liaison to the county’s Secondary Road and Planning and Development departments, and in January 2026 Gov. Kim Reynolds appointed her to the Iowa Nuclear Energy Task Force.

She succeeded her father, Louis Zumbach, on the board after he chose not to seek re-election, and she was named the board’s chair for 2025, the Corridor Business Journal reported. Zumbach is the father whose Oct. 28 birthday sits a few days after his two newest grandsons’ shared one.

Readers may remember Laura Kelly and her sister Alicia, who got positive pregnancy tests two days apart with the same due date. The Iowa sisters’ story played out on a much tighter clock: two labors, two rooms, 29 minutes.

Inside St. Luke’s Birth Center

Neighboring rooms are possible in a unit the size of the one at St. Luke’s. The hospital’s Birth Care Center has 37 private suites where mothers labor, deliver and recover in the same room, and nearly 2,400 babies were born there last year, according to UnityPoint Health.

The hospital says it is the only Level III maternal and neonatal center in the Cedar Rapids area, as determined by the American Academy of Pediatrics, and that it was the first birth care center in the nation to receive a national award for family-centered maternity care.

Both boys came ahead of schedule. Meisheid was induced early, KCRG reported, and Sweeney’s son also arrived before his Halloween due date. Due dates are estimates, and federal health officials use a range of weeks rather than a single day to describe a term birth. Under categories set by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and explained by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, early term runs from 37 weeks through 38 weeks and 6 days, and full term from 39 weeks through 40 weeks and 6 days.

The hospital’s other services include a Level III newborn intensive care unit, which UnityPoint says was chosen as Iowa’s first and only site for the March of Dimes NICU Family Support program, and eastern Iowa’s first Ronald McDonald Family Room.

Both mothers and both babies were reported healthy, and the two youngest cousins went home from the hospital on Saturday, Oct. 24, KCRG reported.

Cousins Who Will Grow Up Side by Side

The sisters live near one another and plan to raise the boys close together, according to CBS2. Sweeney said the two of them will get to share milestones as Myles and Kohen grow up.

The newborn weeks are already a shared project. Meisheid said the sisters lean on each other through the hard parts of caring for a new baby, calling and texting back and forth. She said the family feels “so blessed.”

For two boys born on the same evening, half an hour and one wall apart, that closeness started on their first day. Their shared Oct. 22 birthday now sits in the middle of the family’s busiest month for cake.

Get stories like this by email. Sign up for The Parent Diaries Letter.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Ernest F – CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons