Miel

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.