June 16, 2009, may have been just another day for most of us. But it’s one that Maura West will never forget — and would never want to. “On a bright and sunny afternoon… 14 years ago today… ” she Instagrammed, “this delightful human arrived! She makes the world better.

“Happy birthday,” she concluded, “to my precious daughter, Birdie!”

The eighth-grader is the youngest of West’s five children. The General Hospital Emmy winner has a son, Benjamin, from her first marriage and four kids with second husband Scott DeFreitas, whom she met when they were playing Carly and Andy on As the World Turns. Their offspring are sons Joseph (born in 2000 and now a Broadway actor) and Basil (born in 2007), and daughters Katherine (also an actor, born in 2002) and Birdie.

Among the General Hospital stars wishing Birdie well on her special day were Laura Wright (Carly), Katelyn MacMullen (Willow), West’s former leading man Matt Cohen (ex-Griffin), Briana Nicole Henry (ex-Jordan) and Michelle Stafford, the original Nina who is now back in her first soap role of Phyllis on Young & Restless. (Ironically, she and West played nemeses on that show, too, when the latter passed through Genoa City as Diane.)

Back in 2020, Ava’s portrayer observed that her youngest has the same birthday as one of her General Hospital co-stars, James Patrick Stuart, who plays Valentin.

On your way to the comments to add your happy-birthday wishes for Birdie, check out pictures of more soap stars and their real-life kids in the below photo album. It’s recently been “Aww!”-somely expanded.

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