US Woman Wins $1.4 Million Lottery Using Child's Birthday Numbers

Picking lottery numbers can be a superstitious affair. People use everything from lucky charms to consistently playing the same numbers, hoping to strike it rich. One mom, aptly nicknamed "Lucky Mom," used her child's birthdate as her lucky number. 

This gamble paid off in a big way, winning her $1.4 million in the Illinois Lottery's Lucky Day Lotto jackpot! As fate would have it, she discovered the news while tending to her crying baby in the early hours, according to a release from the Illinois Lottery.

"My baby woke up crying, and after tucking them back into bed, I had trouble falling back asleep. So to pass the time, I opened the lottery app on my phone, and I couldn't believe it when it showed that I had just won $1.4 million! Absolutely wackadoodle," she said in a statement included in the release.

"I've played Lucky Day Lotto here and there, and when I do, I use my kids' birthdays as my lucky numbers," she said.

The winning numbers that were selected in the evening drawings on March 6 were 6, 8, 16, 17 and 20.

Speaking about her big win, Lucky Mom told ABC News, "I have the best job in the world: I'm a stay-at-home mom, and I already feel very lucky and blessed for where I'm at in life -- but today, the word 'lucky' took on a whole new meaning."

She recalled she joked with her husband afterwards about revealing which child's birthday translated to the lucky number selection. 

"After I won, I asked my husband 'Do you want to know which kid's birthday helped us win the jackpot?'" she recalled asking her husband.