Monday, April 21, 2014

How to Get a Baby to Come (Not Really)

*Inspired by a cousin and his wife, who are expecting a baby any day now.  Please do not start rumors about me.  

Having weathered ten successful pregnancies, I can tell anyone who asks with absolute certainty, there is no way to make those people get a move on absent a petocin drip, and sometimes, even that doesn't work.  Nope.  Best to understand now before the kiddo shows up, these little people, despite their small size, have minds of their own and schedules that do not consult you.  

But when I was expecting, I got all kinds of kindly advice about how to make the babies arrive ahead of schedule, most of them about as useful as hiccup cures, and being based on about as much scientific evidence. 

5) Eat something.  Usually, around 8 months, I'd begin getting suggestions from local establishments about how if I ate #14 on the a'la carte menu, I'd be pushing the latest kid out before the dinner rush.  These testimonies often included vivid descriptions of flooding said restaurant, or deliveries I could take out and take home.  They also often resulted in sad faces on said owners of establishments when I'd deliberately opt not to eat whatever it was, if only to be able to return again some other day and not die of embarrassment.  

4) Whatever you do, you're doing it wrong.  I found if I was exercising, the general consensus was rest.  If I was resting, "You should exercise." The bottom line, everything not causing a contraction must be preventing it.  

3) Smells.  There is something about having a belly the size of a basketball that makes strangers want you to sniff things.  Note to eager perfume hawkers, cigar experts and other fans of aroma based therapy, it doesn't work.   It does however make the pregnant woman nauseated, which one might suspect is a bad idea. 

2) Lucky hats, socks, coats, maternity sweaters...if they were lucky, you used it up. But they are probably just hats, socks, coats and maternity sweaters you happened to be wearing when the little timer in your kiddo finally popped up and said, time to get going!

1)  The only thing I know works is this: Go about making plans. Make them fun. Make them big.  Get to work on making them happen. Eventually, the baby will disrupt plans.

1 comment:

Karen said...

I learned last time around that NOTHING makes a baby come before the time is just right. So here I am two and a half weeks away from my due date wondering if I have four more days to go or or possibly 3 1/2 more weeks since the last baby was a full week late after the first two were two weeks early.

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