THE FRONT ROW WITH BRUCE BOURQUIN: Friday, November 12, 2014

Post Falls High senior cheerleader Payton Allert has cheered for her fraternal twin sister Shayna, a 5-foot-7 senior guard on their father Marc Allert's girls basketball team, throughout their high school years.

But from November 1996 until a few weeks after their birth on Feb. 19, 1997, things may have turned out differently for the now 17-year-olds. Shayna was born two minutes earlier than Payton, at 4:07 p.m. Payton is a touch shorter at 5-foot-5.

THIS IS not your typical holiday story, full of cheer and wonderment. It involves a touch of fate, some coincidence, luck and a few scary moments.

In Post Falls on Christmas Eve of 1996, Darci Allert, Marc's then-29-year-old wife, was pregnant with Shayna and Payton. Marc was 33 at the time and is now 51, while Darci is 47.

Darci had contractions that could not be stopped, so the doctor who was going to deliver the twins was called at his home to get him to Deaconess Hospital in Spokane.

The original delivery date, Darci said, was March 25, 1997.

"She was not due until March," Marc said. "So at that time, they were three months premature and weighed about a pound each. We were told they would probably not live and if they did, would most likely have some brain damage."

But fate, or whatever you want to call it, stepped in, as the doctor who was going to deliver the Allert twins was stuck during an ice storm.

"On the way to the hospital, the doctor went off the road and got stuck," Marc said. "He showed up two hours after he was supposed to. Just before the doctor got there, Darci's contractions stopped and they did not have to be delivered then. If the doctor had not gone off the road, they would have been delivered three months earlier, as it was they lasted until February."

"I was bedridden in November of 1996," Darci recalled. "I was at home for about one month, on a home telephone monitoring system. I received a call while home alone sleeping, saying that my contractions were too close and I needed to get to the hospital. Marc was coaching that night at a game in Cheney and could not hear his phone."

Marc's parents, Skip and Marge of Post Falls, drove Darci to Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d'Alene. Later that evening, Darci was transported via ambulance to Deaconess.

"I was only 26 weeks along," Darci said. "So they called Heart Flight, not knowing if the babies were even big enough to make it. On the way from Coeur d'Alene to Spokane, they thought I'd deliver in the ambulance."

A mother of an eventual teammate of Shayna's on the Trojans girls basketball team just happened to be helping Darci along.

"There was this wonderful lady from the Heart Flight crew that calmed me so much that I knew she was the reason I made it to the hospital and didn't deliver in the ambulance," Darci said. "I found out a few years later that it was the mom of a girl my daughters played basketball with (current Trojan senior Maia Anderson) and were good friends with. I went into labor every few days and they were able to stop it each time, sometimes so close as to start preparing for a C section. Someone was really looking down on us and those girls."

THE TIME between Christmas Eve 1996, when Darci was brought in to Deaconess Hospital, and when the twins were born on Feb. 19, 1997, was hectic.

"I never got to leave, I was there the whole time," Darci said. "Every time I got wheelchair privileges, they would start me in labor again and they had my bed tilted toward down toward my head, using gravity, so they had to continue to check me for any infections or blood clots. I was in there and we kept them on their toes, they kept a room open and every time they got me to stop contractions, Marc would stay the night. It was very scary, especially the first night. I asked what would be wrong with them if they were born and they said sometimes you don't know until they're 2 years old, what their issues may be. If you hang in there and do what we say, then there would've been a better chance of them (being fine)."

Marc, who at the time was an assistant coach with the Post Falls boys basketball team, took care of his wife and the newborn daughters for three weeks after Dr. Cherie Johnson delivered them. The girls had to be fed through the nose until the day they came home and each of them weighed a little less than 5 pounds. But since then, there have been no complications and the girls have been pretty healthy.

Dr. Tony Henneberg, who worked at Kootenai Medical Center, was originally supposed to deliver the twins.

"They made sure we were working with my local doctor," Darci said. "After that, Tony told me if you do go into labor way early, you'll have to go to Spokane because they had the facilities to take care of me, with the intensive care unit. When I was told I had to go to Kootenai Medical Center, they were going to try and stop the contractions. They had to give me shots and everything and they called Heart Flight (a medical helicopter) and they noticed the contractions were going to stop and Heart Flight got grounded in a storm. And they drove from Spokane to Kootenai and picked me up in case the babies were born in the ambulance."

STEVE WIDMYER, who was the controller at The Coeur d'Alene Resort at that time and is now the Coeur d'Alene Mayor, was the supervisor of Darci, who was a marketing analyst and helped out in the accounting department at the Resort. Darci is now a sales manager at Nitron, a business in Liberty Lake that sells water meters.

"Steve and his wife Marie were very supportive and helped a lot through this time," Darci said. "Steve was very understanding and held my position, even though I was out about five months."

Darci's parents, Bob and Kathy Johnston, took turns taking care of the twins after they were born later on.

AFTER SEVEN years of Marc and Darci attempting to have children, the Allert twins were conceived with their parents using in vitro fertilization in Bellingham, Wash., with Dr. Emmett Branigan, who opened the Bellingham IVF and Fertility Care facility in 1995. Marc said the procedure cost more than $20,000.

In vitro fertilization, which has been around since 1978, involves combining eggs and sperm outside the body in a laboratory. Once an embryo or embryos form, they are then placed in the uterus. Dr. Branigan's staff implanted the embryos on the Fourth of July.

"It was very stressful going through the process back then and it was not as common as it is today," Darci said. "We felt very lucky having two babies who were pretty healthy for being premature. There has been no greater gift to Marc and I than those two girls. They have grown to be such beautiful young ladies, both inside and out."

THE DIFFERENCES are certainly there among the twins, as are the similarities. Payton is blonde and looks more like Darci, whereas the brown-haired Shayna looks a bit like Marc.

Payton has been a four-year varsity cheerleader, while playing on the junior varsity basketball team for her first two years. Shayna was called up during the middle of her freshman year to play on the varsity team. She is currently averaging 10 points, five assists, three rebounds and two steals per game.

"Shayna's very competitive," Marc said. "She'll lie, cheat, scratch and claw in order to win. With Payton, it's all about fun. They're great kids, very friendly, I never have to worry about them."

Shayna Allert has appreciated her parents' decision to not give up their goal of having children.

"I feel really blessed since they had to do in vitro, that we got to be twins," Shayna Allert said. "The fact that we are like so close and we were born early, but we turned out perfectly fine. They talked about it a lot when we were growing up."

The unusual sequence of events leading up to their birth - the doctor running off the side of the road and having it in part leading to the twins being born nearly a month premature as opposed to three months, is not lost on the girls.

"They prayed all the time that they'd get pregnant and everything and it ended up working out for them," Shayna said. "I guess you could call it fate."

PAYTON, WHO was on a state championship cheer team in 2010 and a state runner-up the next year, and who finished first on an individual stunt team as a freshman, seconds that notion. Payton is a flyer who does stunts, twists, flips and turns in the air. She wants to be a second-grade teacher and is considering attending the University of Montana, after attending a cheerleading camp there last year.

She grew up going from cheerleading competitions straight to basketball tournaments, makeup and all. During her freshman and sophomore seasons, she'd play JV games and then change quickly in order to cheer in the varsity games. In seventh grade, she was part of a national championship squad that won in Anaheim, Calif., with several teammates in high school and college.

"My mom calls us miracle babies," Payton said. "I think I'm just lucky. There's sometimes a low chance you'd get one baby, let alone two. I love my team, I like basketball season the most, because I get to watch her."

When Shayna played in the state championship game as a sophomore (when Post Falls beat Coeur d'Alene 46-44 in 2013), Payton couldn't cheer for her because that week, she was assigned to cheer for the boys team.

But in the title game, Payton was there in the stands at the Idaho Center in Nampa, next to her mom, rooting on Shayna, Marc and the Trojans team.

"It was the most nerve-wracking game ever, we were freaking out," Payton recalled. "It was awesome, it was so cool for our whole family. I'd love to go to school (college) with her, we're together all the time, but we want separate things. But it could happen. It'd be weird not to have her around; I can't really imagine it."

SHAYNA IS leaning toward attending Washington State University, to study radiology and ultrasound, in part because of how they were born and her curiosity in the field. The possibility of playing basketball at the Division II level is a possibility as well.

And of course, Shayna enjoys playing for her father and having her sister right there on the sidelines.

"If I'm ever frustrated, she'll smile and nod at me, kind of saying, 'You're good,'" Shayna said.

Yes, Shayna and Payton, it's been all good.

Bruce Bourquin is a sports writer at The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2013 or via e-mail at bbourquin@cdapress.com