Two babies who are very special to Hope and Raleigh Henderson are doing well in the couple’s Evanston home.
The boy and the girl born early Tuesday, March 3, arrived into the world the natural way — and weighing 18 pounds, 10 ounces combined.
“I think it's a state record for Utah and for Wyoming,” Hope Henderson said. “I’m not sure though.”
Wyoming Department of Health Operations Manager Lindsay Mills reports they are, when comparing births of twins over the past five years.
Mills said a search of records over the past half-decade shows the largest twin births came in at 8.59 pounds and 7.05 pounds in 2024, or a combined nearly 16 pounds.
The Henderson babies were born in Ogden, Utah, at Arrivals Birth Services run by Chris Miller, a certified professional midwife (CPM).
The arrival of the twins wasn’t just special because of their weight, which was well over 9 pounds each. Their birth required the couple to go out of state due to a Wyoming law that governs how twins can be born and who can be present.
Henderson, also a CPM, spent time with Miller training as a midwife. She now runs her own business called Born With Hope Midwifery in Evanston.
After learning she was pregnant with what the couple thought was their third child, Hope Henderson and her husband planned to follow their past practice used to bring her first two children into the world. They would just have the birth in their own home.
Then at her 20-week ultrasound, Henderson learned she was having fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. Henderson said since the babies had their own placentas and were completely separate, it represented a “best-case scenario” to go ahead with a home birth.
But they were confronted with a state law that does not allow midwives in Wyoming assist in the birth of twins at a home.
Utah Midwife
So, Henderson turned to Miller in Utah, a state that does allow twin births using midwives. And Henderson knew that Miller has helped bring many sets of twins into the world during her 54-year career.
“I reached out to her and told her that I was having twins, and she’s been awesome,” Henderson said. “That’s kind of where we started. All the scans looked good, and they obviously grew plenty.”
Miller, 82, said she can’t remember how old the oldest set of twins are that she helped bring into the world because that was a long time ago in California. But her oldest set of twins in Utah, where she has practiced for the past 45 years, are now 45.
She has helped mothers bring more than 4,000 babies to birth during her career.
When Henderson contacted her, Miller said they had a conversation and then they followed through with the protocols, standards, and monitoring through the prenatal visits that are important to track a healthy and normal pregnancy.
“Always the safety of the mother and the baby are the most important thing that we consider,” Miller said. “If anything falls out of that norm, we usually refer out or at least get second opinions.”
Miller said her birth center at Arrivals Birth Service is 3,000 square feet and “looks like somebody’s home.”
It has all the monitoring equipment for the baby and mom that one would find in a hospital outside of an operating room, she said.
Henderson said the last few weeks of her pregnancy were tough in terms of being able to do the things moms need to do around the home.
“I got pretty big,” she said. “I could barely do anything, but I still went into labor naturally at 40 weeks and two days.”
The birth pangs started on Monday evening as a snowstorm was hitting Evanston and eastern Utah. The couple called Miller and then headed to Ogden through the snow which turned to rain in Ogden.
The couple’s son, Clay, was born first at 1:23 a.m., weighed 9 pounds, 4 ounces and was 20 1/2-inches long. Their daughter, Leah, was born at 1:34 a.m. and weighed 9 pounds, 6 ounces. She was 20 inches long.
Water Birth
Henderson said she chose to do a water birth in a pool, and her son was born normally, headfirst, but Leah decided to come out feet first.
“Chris helped quite a bit to get her out and everything,” Henderson said.
Henderson said having the babies in the water helped her with mobility and positioning and alleviates some of the weight and pressure.
Miller said the fact that Henderson is a midwife herself helped make the prenatal care and birthing process smooth.
“I think that anybody in the medical field probably would say that (the birth of) twins are not routine,” she said. “I am not saying they are either. Hope took really good care of herself, she was a really good candidate, and the birth went really well.”
Looking back at their family histories, neither Henderson nor her husband have any kind of genetic leaning to twins of any kind, whether fraternal or identical. Her mother’s family had 11 siblings and she has more than 80 cousins — none have had twins.
Henderson said her husband is excited to have a boy in the family after their previous two children were girls and foresees a “little bit of male energy” among all the girls in the household.
One joke in the family after the couple learned they would have fraternal twins is that Leah, who floated above her brother in the womb, “will hover over him for the rest of his life.”
“There’s always a dominant twin and a more passive twin,” Henderson said. “We’ll see how that goes.”
She doesn’t expect the new additions to her family to impede her midwife role for other women in Wyoming. She said she typically assists with 24 births a year and travels to Jackson and across the region to help her patients with birth.
Midwife Calling
Henderson first thought of becoming a midwife after witnessing them at work in Peru as she did her mission experience with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She said she witnessed a lot of moms who breastfed their babies and gave birth naturally.
After returning home, she enrolled in the Midwives College of Utah and earned her bachelor’s degree.
As a midwife, she wanted to have the babies naturally, but also understands that birth complications would have changed her decision.
Henderson said moms with conditions such as gestational diabetes or pre-eclampsia — which involves high blood pressure — would not be recommended for a non-hospital or home birth.
Henderson said although she got big, she tried to eat healthy and recalls eating a lot of soups, and also a craving for steak.
Her example of bringing twins into the world naturally, will likely be an experience she draws on as she talks to her clients about home births, she said.
“I think we just need to normalize what birth is,” Henderson said. “Our bodies are meant to give birth, if you eat well, take care of yourself, you can have a really good birth experience.”
While the Henderson twins may be a record for Wyoming, they are nowhere near the Guinness World Record for twin birth weight.
That goes to a Fort Smith, Arkansas, mom who on Feb. 20, 1924, gave birth to fraternal twins who weighed more than 27 pounds.
Mary Ann Haskin brought Patricia Jane Haskin (13 pounds, 12 ounces) and John Prosser Haskin Jr. (14 pounds) into the world. Both were healthy.
“Either child would be considered of extraordinary weight, according to Dr. B. Wayne Freer, the attending physician, and a nurse who witnessed the weighing of the children at their birth,” the Fort Smith Times Record reported on Feb. 20, 1924. “They are the largest twin babies they have ever ‘met’ in professional experience or have ever read of.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
