Newborn Jacob Marriott astonished his mum and dad after becoming the sixth member of his family to share the same birthday.

Proud parents Zabrina Marriott, 20, and Mark Eaton, 26, thought it strange enough they were both born on February 23.

But when Miss Marriott, of Twelve Acres, Braintree, went into labour on her birthday they could hardly believe it.

She said: "I met Mark five years ago and we discovered we had the same birthday - though we were born six years apart. We had our first son Joseph in May, 1998. Then I found out last July I was pregnant again and the hospital gave me a date of March 6.

"We thought it would be quite funny if we had a baby on the same day as our birthdays but we weren't really expecting it to happen.

"So when I went into labour last Wednesday at 12.10 in the morning we thought this is a joke - it's not really happening."

It nearly didn't. But with just minutes to go, Jacob popped out to hit his delivery deadline, weighing a bouncing 7.5lbs.

"He only just made it at 11.49pm on the 23rd," said Zabrina.

The odds on having a child with the same birthday as both its parent is 133,225 to one.

Amazingly, little Jacob is the sixth member of the family to be born on February 23. HGV driver Mark has a twin brother - Jonathan.

And Zabrina's grandmother Florence, who was born on February 23, 1909, had a twin sister called Violet, although both are now dead.

Zabrina added: "After we saw the odds against this happening, we knew we should have put a bet on. There's more chance of winning the lottery.

"Jacob's oblivious to it all, but he's lovely."

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.