20 wives at Texas fire department expecting babies

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Was it a pregnancy pact or something in the water? The South Montgomery Fire Department has 20 firefighters' wives expecting newborns, all within a one-year's time frame.

"There are 26 firefighters per shift and 100 fully staffed in the department. There's 20 of us expecting so that's 20% of our department," said firefighter Joe Cuccia.

It's a domino effect of baby announcements in what appears to be some sort of infectious baby fever that's spread to 20 South Montgomery firefighter's wives.

"We found out we were pregnant, then it kind of just kept going," said Stephani Stan, who delivered her first born son in December.

"One person announced it then the next person was just like, 'Oh, us too!'" said Erin Sharpe, who's due in May.

Six of the 20 have already delivered and 14 are still showing off their baby bumps. Most families are celebrating their first borns and so far, most of them are boys.

The burning question for this fire department: Holy smokes, how did this happen???

"I don't even know how. We joke sometimes when they're like, oh it's something in the water. It's not in the water. It's definitely in the tequila," Stan said.

If you think 20 pregnancies within a one-year time frame is just pure coincidence, take Sarah and Joe Cuccia for example. The couple has a 15-, 10- and 9-year-old, and their newborn Matthew is their fourth kid.

"They say families spend a lot of time together after a disaster and a lot of us were working non-stop during Harvey. So maybe it was the water from Harvey," Cuccia said.

"He was definitely a surprise. We have effectively started over," said Sarah Cuccia.

In the instance of Andrea and Riley Kent, who've been trying for years with no luck after Andrea battled stage two thyroid cancer for over a year.

"We're due july 21st and we've actually been trying for 4 years. I'm a cancer survivor so this is sort of a miracle baby for us," said Andrea.

With 20 new kids due by September, the department has enough to create their own daycare class, or four basketball teams!

While the men help cover each others shifts, the women plan to share baby clothes and hand me downs. And of course, take turns playing baby sitter to one another, because at this point, they're all family.

"It's nice to be able to be pregnant with your friends and especially since everyone here is such a family. It's all the support and everything," said Kellie Thompson, who's due in June.

With two of the babies delivered last year, the group only needs one more to round up the number to 19 pregnancies in 2019.

To keep track of the growing number of due dates, one of the firefighters has created a list.

The next item on their agenda is to coordinate all 20 families to get together for a group photo.