1:37, 1:39 a.m.

4 pounds, 10 ounces; 4 pounds, 14 ounces

Columbia Presbyterian Hospital

Alan Burdick is an editor at Discover, the science magazine, but his attitude toward the birth of his twins was far from objective. “I was probably like every father,” he said, “worried in advance about passing out and the sight of blood and all that.” It didn’t help that his wife, Susan Dominus, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, went into labor six weeks before her due date. “What’s happening now?” she kept demanding with a reportorial persistence. “How much longer is this going to take?” Mr. Burdick ultimately rallied and wound up cutting the umbilical cords of little Leo, who wields a Herculean grip on his toys (“He’s more the bouncer at the club door,” said the new pops), and Joshua, a li’l cut-up who was given the nickname “Mel Brooks” by his mom. “It’s bizarre,” Mr. Burdick mused. “You go into the hospital as a couple, and the next day you aren’t a couple, but you don’t really feel like a family—whatever the hell a family is.”