WHEN little Grace Loughton was born at York Hospital on New Year’s Day, it was against all the odds.

For her mother Sarah – who works as a cashier at bookies William Hill in Selby – was also born on New Year’s Day, 24 years earlier.

Sarah, of Millgate, Selby, said Grace had been due to arrive on December 23 but the day passed by without any signs of labour.

She was then convinced Grace would emerge into the world either on Christmas Day or New Year’s Day.

Grace’s father, Dave Lyon, who works as a steel rigger at Drax Power Station, was convinced it would be January 1 and won a sweepstake at his local, the Station Inn in Selby, on Grace being born then.

Sarah said she went into the early stages of labour on New Year’s Eve but managed to join in the celebrations at the Albion Vaults, another Selby pub which is run by her parents, John and Sharon.

“They were all cheering me at the pub,” she said.

She finally headed off to hospital an hour after midnight and Grace was born at 1.35pm, weighing 6lbs 13 ozs.

A William Hill spokesman said the odds on a mother and her baby both being born on the same day were probably a “golden million-to-one,” although the bet would have to be placed long before the mother’s birth.

The odds of any baby being born on New Year’s Day, or any other particular day, are one in 365, meaning the chances of any two people being New Year’s Day babies are one in 133,225.

The spokesman said the firm quite often took bets from husbands on their babies being born on the same day as their wives, once it became clear there was a possibility of it happening. Grace was one of three babies born in York on New Year’s Day, all of whom are from the Selby area.

As reported on Tuesday, Maxwell Baxter-Kershaw, of Hillam, was born first, and Jane Walker, of Wressle, also gave birth to a baby boy.