Why you shouldn’t rush your due date
June 16, 2008 by Marijke Durning, RN
Filed under Women's Health
I know, it’s hard. You’ve been pregnant for what feels like forever. You’re bigger than you ever have been, you’re uncomfortable, the baby likes to use your bladder as a punching bag – when he or she isn’t sitting on it, and you haven’t been able to eat your favorite foods since you realized that baby doesn’t like it either. So, it’s tempting to try to speed things up a little bit – especially if all this is taking place in the heat of summer.
I’ve been there and, honestly, I did speed things up for my second and third children. My first one weighed in at over 9 pounds and he wasn’t an easy delivery. To this day, I feel he should have been a c-section. So, in my determination not to have any more monster-sized babies, my other two were born two weeks early. With my first, I went into labor immediately after the doctor broke my water, so chances are I would have gone into labor soon anyway, and with the my third, I think I may have had three drops of induction med before I was in full-blown labor, giving birth just 2.5 hours later. Both children, born at 38 weeks, were almost 8 pounds. To be honest though, we did have a legitimate reason to bring number 3 out early as it looked like he may have some problems – thankfully, he did not.
Now, we’re learning that even those last couple of weeks are important and we shouldn’t be rushing them. According this article, Expectant Moms Should Wait Out Due Date For Deliveries, Experts Urge, the baby is still using those final weeks to fine tune and finish developing.
So, no matter how tempting it is, remember that the end is in sight – hang in there!
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This has always been my gut feeling. I wanted to avoid two things when pregnant with my daughter. One was being induced and the other was a c-section. I lucked out on both and went into labor the day before my due date. My doctor had made the comment the week before I gave birth that we would have to start discussing options at my next visit (on my due date.)
With this pregnancy, I have the same feelings.
My friend was induced in the morning, and by 3:00 that afternoon, her doctored told her she just wasn’t progressing enough and took her for a section. I find that scary.
Denise went in to be induced with our first three each about a week after the due date. We even went four-wheeling to bounce the first one out… And yes, we were eyeing up the cod liver oil (NOT recommended) to get things started “naturally”. She wanted that baby out!
At 5′1″ and all of them over 8lbs, she was ready but they just weren’t coming out. The doctor decided for her health, it was needed each time.
Still with our fourth and final, little Caleb, we induced a week early because we had no-one to help with the other kids for three weeks after that…
They put the reason for inducing as “Social”. That held until Caleb came out at 11lbs and the doctor had to struggle to lift him in time as she was still expecting an 8.5 baby to land in her waiting hands. I actually reached down to help catch! It was a near thing…
Still we are firmly in the camp of letting nature take its course. The contractions are different when they are natural. We’ve been told repeatedly that natural contractions are easier (relatively speaking). That proved to be the case as we went in early on the morning of the induction for our third child and things just progressed on their own with the tiniest nudge.
The body knows what it is doing. Both your body and the baby’s.