PLANNING A DELIVERY DATE

the first problem is that few people get pregnant the first time of
trying, so there is no way of predicting when to start trying so you
get pregnant with a roughly correct due date.

Exactly. Plus, you can only get pregnant when you ovulate, and you can't
start at the due date and work backwards, because you may not be ovulating
on that day. It's just dumb. The most that people can do is try to get
pregnant when they are ovulating, and the due date falls where it may.

that was what I was thinking, but then I thought because 37-42 weeks is
considered term, as long as you chosen date didn't mean hanging on, you
might swing it, but then there would be a high risk of iatrogenic
prematurity and that would be even more negligent of the doctor.

As it happened my 2 children had the same due date, there was no way I could
have planned that, my LMP date was quite different it just happened that for
the 2nd child I ovulated very late in my cycle.

Anne

I do know of people who try to plan to have babies in certain months, like
teachers who want to try to have the baby after the school year, or not be
hugely pregnant in the summer or something like that. But I've never
heard of anyone say that they were specifically trying for a due date of
any certain day.

that's very true, my mum was a teacher and she wanted to have me in the
Autumn term, so she could leave at the end of the summer, so she came off
the pill and was supposed to be using other methods for 3 months, but
something happened, it still causes my parents to giggle 27 years later and
she got pregnant a little too soon, in those days it was really not done to
work after 29 weeks but she worked until about 33 weeks which would be very
normal or even early these days!

btw, my birthday is 5th October

Anne

I'm mom of three, and one has a Christmas Day birthday and another a
Boxing Day birthday (Dec 26). Believe me, it was NOT planned. The son
who was born on Christmas Day was our second child, and since I was
trying for a first VBAC, I refused induction without a specific
indicator. He was due on the 10th of December, and I went into
spontaneous labour on Christmas Eve. Argh, argh, argh.

No one in their right mind would want to have a baby on a holiday.
During those last weeks of pregnancy, I had a heck of a time getting
routine care, because even hospitals cut back to bare staff i.e.
getting my non-stress tests was a challenge. When I had my son,
fortunately I had a GP midwife combo, because there was next to no
staff on the maternity ward - and the nursery was shut, so when I
needed a shower, I had to drag baby down the hall to the nurses desk so
they could watch him.

Second time it happened it was similar - I was due on the 12th, and
this time because policies had changed, they wouldn't let me go over 14
days over, so I was induced on Boxing Day. No one was around, staff was
very bare, it was very inconvenient. They did NOT want to induce me on
Boxing Day - they were pushing for a week or more earlier, but I was
trying to give baby time to come on its own.

If anything, there was huge pressure on me both times to get baby out
before holidays, since the docs, midwives, nurses, technicians blah,
blah, blah all want time off then, so they run with a skeleton staff.

Both times, it was also very, very difficult to find family or friends
who were around to look after older kids (we had to call several people
each time before we found someone who could take kiddos. And it also
has never been particularly great to have two kids who have Christmas
birthdays in terms of keeping birthdays and Xmas separate, although
we've worked out some traditions that work for us. My charge cards
about burst into flames in December (all three of my brother's kids are
all December birthdays as well).

M