Younger brothers out of state wedding 3 weeks before wifes due date
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Bacc coming out of the wood work to defend a man! This is a sign the world isn’t so upside down.
I feel bad for this poor wife.
Tom, your wife is about to have your child, surely you can forego a wedding just because she’s asked you to. Women aren’t reccomended to travel 4-6 weeks before the due date. Show some support and solidarity for your wife.
I had my first baby at 37 weeks. Completely unexpected. Sitting on the couch with my husband and BOOM water broke, major pain where I could barely stand and a couple hours later our baby was born.
I guess I’m probably the only woman who thinks it’s okay if he goes – but being reasonable/unreasonable is less important than keeping a happy home.
This is another woman chiming in. I am also kind of indecisive about this.
I am thinking the LW could book the tickets and as the date approaches, may be check with the doctor about chances of early delivery and wife to see how she is feeling? Cancel if necessary. And if going, spend the minimum of time away. Like go, attend and rush right back.
And 3 weeks out or not, pregnant women face many risks throughout pregnancy. But we still go about our day because no one gives nine months off from work.
I think we can all agree that chances are he could go and everything would be fine with his wife and baby (assuming she’s had no complications up to that point). It’s really not about playing the odds though. It’s about being in this together.
So people have been asking for numbers for a while so I’ll chime in a bit.
The reality is that due dates don’t mean anything. The reality is that 4.4% of women will get into spontaneous labor on their due date. Due dates are an approximation, and nothing more.
A baby is considered “full term” starting at 37 weeks. This means that labor could be any time at this point. At 37 weeks, the baby wouldn’t be “early”, it wouldn’t be “a surprise” or “unexpected”, it would be normal, on time, full term, not a surprise.
So right now we are talking about somebody who wants to travel for a weekend when it would be totally normal for his wife to give birth any moments.
The chances are non-negligeable. There’s a 9.3% chances that the baby will be born by week 38. So maybe it won’t be that exact weekend. Maybe it’s going to be a day after you come back. Maybe it’s going to be on week 42, who knows? But there’s basically a 10% chance that the baby is born by week 38. That’s 1 out of 10. Think of 10 people you know. One out of those people was probably born by week 38.
By the way, 24% of birth are not spontaneous (that’s 1 out of 4). Which means there are a lot of emergency c-section, emergency induction, and last minute stressful decisions that have to be made. Your wife might not be planning to have her baby while you’re gone, but she might need somebody to sign a paper while she’s wheeled into the OR for an emergency c-section. Nobody wants that, but it happens.
I’m putting all those numbers here because I want to make something clear: we are not talking about a baby arriving early. We are talking about a baby arriving on time. We are talking about a weekend trip while you’re wife could go into labor at any point, and while it would be totally normal for her to do so.
Labor and childbirth are scary. Women die in childbirth. Babies die in childbirth. And even during a normal delivery, there is pain, and stress, and decisions to be made.
If my husband was on a weekend trip to his brother’s wedding when I went into labor at 37 weeks, I don’t think I could forgive him. It would basically mean “I thought about you being scared, in pain, and without me, and I thought it would be ok for me to do that to you.” I wouldn’t be able to go past that.
Oh, please. Me asking for a medical professional’s opinion has nothing to do with me hating women. (PS — I only hate DUMB women, which, sadly seem to be a prevailing trend here on DW among LW’s as of late.) The reason I asked — is frankly, I have no idea what are the odds she actually would give birth. And some basic facts rather than pure conjecture and anecdotal evidence seems warranted. Frankly, I am amazed we have no doctors, nurses, or medical professionals lurking here to chime in.
Look – I’m not a medical professional or someone who’s given birth and I’m not going to pretend to be either, but it seems like a good rule of thumb if she can’t travel anymore, neither should you. If nothing more than as a common courtesy.
You got pregnant together but she’s had to do all the hard work, so the *least* you could do is share this one small burden of sticking close to home when she’s also required to.
