Due dates irk me. Seriously. I hate the idea that on a specific day my body is going to magically open up and voila! baby will arrive. Yes, I know that most of us know by now that due dates are only estimations and that the reality is very few babies are born on their “due date”. However, for every person who knows this, there are 10 people who still cling to the specific day.
To combat this, I am fond of giving a very vague answer to the question, “When are you due?” I like to give an ish date. For example, according to my pregnancy wheel and menstrual chart, my due date is today (using my midwife’s pregnancy wheel, I get a date two days from mine, and the ultrasound gave a completely different date from both of those). However, I have always answered the above question with “April-ish” or “end of March or April”. I did the same thing with my last two babies. In fact, the only time I ever gave a specific was when I was “over” due with my second child. I couldn’t help it. It was quite fun to see the looks on people’s faces when I answered them with “last week”. The panic was priceless! Really, what were they afraid of? It’s not like I was going to suddenly squat down and have the baby right there!
Why are people so anxious about a day anyway? I get being excited and anxious to meet baby, see what he/she looks like, etc. but why the attachment to a day? In my personal opinion, I think we should have a “due month”. If full term gestation is considered 38-42 weeks, why not just have the due time include all of that? It certainly seems a lot more accurate to me!
Imagine the difference it would make to not be counting down to a specific day but instead to know that sometime between this week and that week, your baby might be born (of course, there’s still a possibility that baby would come before or after that date). Better yet, let’s just say the baby will get here when the baby gets here.
Now THAT is something that seems to really bother some people. The other day I was in the store and an older lady asked me when I was going to have the baby. I said “Who knows? We’ll just have to see!” And she responded by telling me that of course I knew when the baby was going to be born and what was the date? Really? Why do you care so much and further more, why is it any of your business? I continued to be as vague as possible until we finally narrowed it down to me being “due” this week. The next day, at a restaurant, a man asked me when I was due. He too, was unwilling to accept my vague answer. However, instead of just leaving it alone and letting me go on my way, he decided to bombard me with his wife’s end-of-pregnancy ordeal. Sheesh!
born2bmomma said:
I hadn’t told anyone the date, just said around the first week in April. (knowing THE date was the end of March but my body usually takes a few extra days/week) My oldest daughter (10) has been counting down the first week, apparently. Today, in her mind, is THE day! It’s the last day of the first week LOL Last night someone asked and I said, last Wed. They stopped, shocked and said – “well, what happened?!” I said, “I guess no one informed the baby?!” Although I know THE date means nothing to my child or body – I still made plans for this weekend and have a party planned at the beginning of next week because I expected to not be pregnant anymore LOL Oh when will I learn?!
Emilia said:
I know what you mean! Though I felt somewhat obsessed with dates with Mason (“Now I’m 28 weeks three and a half days!”), I really and truly enjoyed my “due month.” As soon as I hit 37 weeks, it was fun to speculate when the baby would be born, and I just enjoyed being term. When I was trying to figure out when my mom should come up, I tried to find statistics and figure out when I was “most likely” to have the baby (HAH!) and judging from what I found, on average, MOST women go “OVERdue” (when not induced, of course).
Anyway, happy could-be-due days! Even if it’s still another two weeks, that’s not so far away 🙂 I sure hope you get some of your incredibly talented photographer friends to post lots of baby pictures of facebook! 😉