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Originally Posted by flapjack  That said, there's enough studies to show that 37 weekers have a LOT more problems than 38 weekers, who have a few more problems than 39 weekers. This only applies to babies who are induced or c-sections, not those who arrive on their own schedule, btw.
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I'd go with this, except to say that I've had two born at 36w5d and 37w3d, both of whom were born following spontaneous labor and neither of whom was fully cooked despite that fact. meanwhile my 39w1d baby was born by emergency c-section after no labor (and no signs of it, my cervix was still locked up tighter than Fort Knox) and she was *still* in FAR better shape, developmentally, and either of the other two. She was the only one who nursed with no trouble at all, and while she's got a tendancy to wheeze when she's ill as well as a congenital kidney defect, she is still a very healthy child while her little sister (the 36+ baby) has the asthma, hypersensitive skin, and catches every little illness that goes around.
Bean is fairly healthy, but his immune system has clearly been slow to develop on it's own (hence the fact that he's the only one of my kids who has asked to nurse since I lost my milk-- this immediately preceded, as always, an illness
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I guess what I'm saying is, even if you were to spontaneously go into labor at 37 weeks, you have no guarantee that the babe will be fully cooked; If you induce at that point, you're pretty much guaranteeing that he *won't* be.
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| And finally, two of mine arrived spontaneously at 42 or 43 weeks, and one arrived spontaneously at 38 weeks. The early one is the one who was admitted to hospital with septicaemia at 3 months, has vaccine reactions, multiple food allergies, eczema, asthma, you name it, he has it. ALL of this is more common in preemies, apart from the vaccine reactions. We've nearly lost him more than once. Now it could be that he came early because he needed to, but it's still a huge gamble. |
I really think that more attention needs to be paid to babies who come in the last month of a term of pregnancy. There's this idea that if you go into labor, the baby is finished. It's clearly not true for women who go into labor in the second trimester, but in the late third. . . well, most women are shocked when their near-term babies end up in NICU, or having a childhood/lifetime of medical issues that they thought happened primarily to preemies. Ever since Bean went to NICU, this has been on my mind-- I realize that most babies born at 37 weeks are "healthy enough," but the health problems that they do have really make me wonder.
Bella did a great many things which I'd read about and learned were very common to preemies, despite the fact that she was so close to term. She didn't wake to nurse, when she cried it would be very brief and then she would just pass out. She even did that (very disturbing) thing when she was really upset where she'd fuss and fidget, cry for a bit, and then go into a kind of shocked unconsciousness, totally freezing in whatever position she was in.
I mean it was scary as heck to see, and totally strange to me to have a baby who reacted so negatively even to bright light as did Bella. I thought she was cooked enough to be past all that, but she clearly wasn't. Yes, she weighed six pounds; Yes, she was born closer to 37 weeks than not, and yes, I went into spontaneous labor with her. None of it changes the fact that the girl just wasn't fully baked when she was born.
None of it changes the fact that as she approaches her second birthday, her speech hasn't even begun to resemble that of her siblings at this age, nor the fact that she has been so far behind her siblings on every. single. milestone as to be on a different scale entirely. She's the least healthy of her siblings, though she's only slightly smaller than her brother was at this age. In many ways, Bella has been my first "baby," despite being my third child-- neither of the other two was a baby at 10 months, to say nothing of 15; Bella is, at 21 months, only recently more of a toddler than an infant. And while that's cool, I have to wonder if a couple of extra weeks in utero might not have been a heck of a lot better for her than getting out so quickly. If it could have prevented the asthma, the allergies (Bella's the ONLY one of my children to maintain a food allergy beyond 12 months, save BooBah's lactose intolerance which is really a very different thing), the "ooh a virus is going around, let's get sick!" deal, I'd have gladly coped with the sciatic nerve pain for another month.
Also, I don't know how things are in your area, but around here nobody will induce you at 37 or 38 weeks just because you're in pain or miserable (I know; I BEGGED with my first 
I give them mad props). The pit is administered via I.V.; you'll probably have one put in before the cervadil (sorry, I forgot that part). You will also be on constant fetal monitoring at this point.
: supermom vibes
