When you meet my daughters, one of the first things they will tell you is, "We're super-special sisters. We have the same birthday, July 12!" (Though I'm sure any minute now my 5-year-old will realize we've sold her on this "super-special" line so she won't complain about having to share a birthday party with a 3-year-old). The follow-up question to me is always, "Did you plan it that way?"
Nope, I did not. But as soon as I realized that Molly's due date was a week after Bellamy's second birthday, I had a pretty strong feeling the gods of irony would send me into labor early just to have a good laugh.
I recently read in the NY Times that, with the increasing rate of planned C-sections, scheduled inductions (and, presumably, more sophisticated birth control and fertility treatments), more and more women are choosing their kids' birthdays. That means you can skip over, say, Friday the 13th (unlucky), Christmas (who wants to get lost in the celebratory shuffle?), or even an older sister's birthday. Weirdest thing in this article was the fact that the single busiest day of the year for births has moved from mid-September to the last week of December. Why? So parents can get the tax write-off for the entire previous year. I kid you not.
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Scheduled inductions and C-sections are increasingly common in Israel, too. Since most of Israel closes down on Saturday for Shabbat, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that far fewer babies are now being born on Saturday, with a noticeable surge of Sunday births. (Sunday is the first day of the week here.)
My sister was born very close to my grandmother's birthday and she had to spend her entire childhood hearing that she was grandma's "birthday present." Plus she had to share a cake with grandma every year. I think grandma liked it a whole lot more than she did.
~Lisa in Jerusalem
But here's another side to your question: Are the parents picking the due dates, or are the doctors? My feeling is that most dates are perfectly fine, but that doctors are actually having a say in whether or not they want to be in the hospital on say, an important holiday. I have one friend who was overdue around Christmas, and her OB told her that she would induce on Dec. 26th if nothing happened. In other words, the OB wanted Christmas day off! (The woman started to develop preeclampsia, however, and the baby was born via emergency C-section on Dec. 23rd.) I think you may be underestimating the influence of the doctors involved. My feeling, as a pregnant woman, is that I look to my OB for advice on the best and healthiest date. If that's on my mother-in-law's birthday, so be it!
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