Please Stay Where You Are

**Remember: these are my opinions. If you don't agree, be nice. Just as you have your own opinions I may disagree with, you may not agree with whatever I have to say here. But just be respectful. Thanks!**

I have been reading pregnancy-related message boards, and I wanted to write about one topic that is and has been bugging me for a while: inducing labor prematurely.

First of all, when a baby comes, it comes on its own accord. Obviously, you can't dictate when your baby will come. There are medical problems for some, and they need to deliver before they are full-term. This post isn't about those people. This is about women who wish and actually try to make labor happen early because a) they are tired of being pregnant, or b) they want their baby to be born on a particular day, or c) any other silly reason.

These women don't read about the trouble premature babies have if they are born early. They don't read about the fact that their babies will have to stay in the NICU for days or even weeks because their bodies weren't developed enough to survive outside the womb when they were born. Even in the later weeks of pregnancy, the baby's body is still working on the lungs, brain, and other organs to be ready to live on its own. There are women on the message boards who were due at around the same time as I, and they have already had their babies. Guess what? Their babies are still at the hospital with feeding tubes and extra oxygen and what not. There are some who are getting ready for their babies to come home, but not that many.

If I were to go into labor now, my son would most likely have to stay at the hospital and be monitored. I still have a month to go! That is a LOT of developing and growing for a fetus. It's not a secret that I've been in a lot of pain. The last couple of months haven't been easy for my body. I've been sleep-deprived and in pain, but I still don't want to go into labor until my due date or later. Of course, there are times when I think it would be cool to have the baby in time for Christmas or New Year's. But that's all it is. Just a thought. It would not be cool, especially when I still have weeks and weeks to go, to spend Christmas and the New Year at the hospital worried about my baby. Again, anything can happen. I could go into labor right now. But at least it would be my body telling me it was time instead of me trying to control nature. You were the one who got pregnant, now deal with it. You can't kick your 8-year old kid out of the house because he or she is being bad and you don't feel like living with the trouble. An 8-year old is not ready to live on his or her own. A fetus shouldn't be "kicked out" of its home, either, just because you can't deal with it anymore.