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| “Traditionally used by women” … but we won’t say what for because then we’d be making medical claims |
No baby yet. It’s only two days past the due date, so that’s not too surprising. For women who were still pregnant at 35 weeks, the probability of spontaneous birth having happened by the due date is only ~50%. See, for example, this birth data[1][2]. Which makes sense. The due date is the single day with the highest probability of the baby being born in what is a normalish distribution. Even that date is fairly suspect when the date of conception is not known.
But that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. Planning is more frustrating the further along we get. Even normally simple things like meal planning become hard. How many meals should we plan? Which ingredients need to be used this week and which can wait?
Practicalities of math and planning aside, mentally, I am in the space of feeling like something should be happening. I want to meet Baby! Plus, now that I’ve reached my due date, the social pressure to have the baby has gone way up — even if, mathematically, that’s completely unfair. I very much appreciated the well wishes, but this year easily sets a record for the number of Happy Forth of July messages sent to me.
I will admit to have tried some of the things on the list of probably-not-effective-but-known-to-be-harmless ways to make labor come sooner[3]: walking, sex, raspberry leaf tea. Even if I don’t actually think these will do anything, at least it gives me the illusion of some influence — and they’re all enjoyable. I’m also trying ice cream as an induction method. No luck yet, but I definitely need more data. I’ve may try massage too. =)
Baby will come when it comes. I just have to be patient. But patience is hard.
[1] Note that the data is not normalized for spontaneous births, so the 42.7% of the births by the due date represents ~56^ of all spontaneous births (since ~76% of the births in the data set were spontaneous).
[2] If you like poking at graphs, click through to the other charts on that site. It’s pretty interesting.
[3] As opposed to the much longer list of things that are definitely not at all effective, the things I have tried do at least have the possibility of maybe doing something, but the evidence is sketchy and the effects tiny at best.