re: New Risks Associated With Elective Deliveries

karmamama — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:21:40 GMT

Who are all these doctors scheduling pre-term deliveries? We're having number two soon, and it will be a c-section to to medical needs, but there's no way my OB OR my hospital would allow for a birth to be scheduled before 39 weeks, unless it were truly medically necessary. Are physicians and parents really so dumb as to think that cutting short your child to finish his development in utero won't have repercussions?

re: New Risks Associated With Elective Deliveries

MamaBear — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 23:00:42 GMT

Wow. My son was born at the margin of pre-/full-term. By LMP, he was born at *just* 37 weeks, but by the dating ultrasound and, ahem, our own calculations, he was 36 weeks. It wouldn't seem like a big deal, except that he couldn't nurse (his jaw wasn't sufficiently developed for him to latch on effectively), which meant that we had to take him to emergency a few hours after getting home from the hospital. (We were discharged with the assurance, "When he gets hungry, he'll eat." I'm still upset about that.)

So after what we went through in his first days and weeks, I can't imagine anyone electing to bring a baby into the world before they are well-and-truly pre-term. If medically necessary, of course, but not just for some form of convenience.