My birthday comes just days before Christmas, so as a child, I always felt cheated and overlooked in the birthday celebration department. Understandably I was concerned when, pregnant with my first child, I was told that my due date was around Christmas, the usual “anytime two weeks before or two weeks after”. I could not take any chances. Having read about it somewhere, late in my pregnancy I began a massage routine that made my body think I was breastfeeding. Doing so would supposedly hasten my delivery date, and maybe it did. A healthy baby girl arrived on the eighth day of December. More than three years later I had my second child, another girl, in August. Months after my summer baby was born, I mentioned to my husband that I’d probably had some prior indication that we would have daughters: I avoid using any fragrance on me, but at some point during each pregnancy, a strong scent of roses inundated me and each time I could not find any likely source. Hearing this, my husband said that had he known about it the first time it happened, sometime during my second pregnancy he would have sprayed some men’s cologne or aftershave all around me when I wasn’t looking. Just wishful thinking on his part; I doubt if that would have changed a thing.
Oh, and maybe you’ve read or heard about the special pizza somewhere that pregnant women munch on to help them shorten their labor period. Fact or fiction, stories abound on pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnancy is a special time, especially for first-time parents. For books and DVDs on the subject, visit the library and search for items with call numbers that start with 618.
