3/7/2023 0 Comments Baby due dateA 2013 study of about 18,700 women in Australia, for instance, found that just 5 percent of births happened on their due dates. In fact, while I thought of my daughter as being late and overdue, like a library book racking up fines with each passing day, her arrival was well within the realm of normal.Ī due date assumes pregnancy will last about 40 weeks, but it’s not meant to be a precise prediction or a deadline for delivery. Had I read the research on pregnancy length, instead of frantically preparing for birth and taking long walks to try to start labor (which hasn’t been proven to work), I might have appreciated how much pregnancies can vary, and how difficult it is to guess when a baby will be born. As my belly grew, so did my discomfort and impatience, until my daughter finally made her appearance - five days after her due date. The days and weeks ticked by and my due date passed uneventfully. I installed the car seat, packed a hospital bag and scrambled to finish work projects. Ripe with the naivety and anticipation of a first pregnancy, I sprang into action. ![]() I can’t remember if she emphasized the word might while reminding me that babies and birth were unpredictable, but if she did, I disregarded that and took her best guess as near-fact. ![]() “You need to be prepared for labor to start any day,” I remember her saying, adding that I might have a baby within a week. When I was 37 weeks pregnant with my first baby - three weeks before my due date - my obstetrician did a routine check of my cervix and noted that it was starting to dilate and shorten, signs that the wheels of the long birth process were beginning to turn. This story was originally published on Aug.
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