Close only Counts in Hand Grenades and Horseshoes

I'm embarassed to link to USA Today, but they had a fair article yesterday on the differences between Near-Term and Term babies.

They're not quite full term, but they're not that premature. They're "near-term" babies, born roughly four or five weeks before their estimated due date.

They typically have normal Apgar scores, used to evaluate newborns' physical condition. Their birth weight is in the normal range. They usually go home with Mom. Most people think they must be healthy.

And generally they are. But research suggests that appearances might be deceiving in some cases. Though near-term babies on average are healthier than preemies, they may not be quite as healthy as full-term babies.

I feel like I've read about this somewhere before -- heck I probably blogged about it and forgot! Anyway, as interesting to me as the relative immaturity of near-term babies, is the motivation for studying them:

Pediatrician Marvin Wang says he became interested in studying near-term babies a few years ago after an obstetrician colleague asked about the merits of scheduling cesarean sections before the 37th week of gestation, when babies are considered full-term.

It's rumored that some celebrity moms have asked to deliver their babies via C-section a month before their due dates to get a head start on slimming down, says Wang, co-director of the newborn nursery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

He says celebrities aren't the only mothers asking for C-sections before 37 weeks. Indeed, research suggests that "patient-choice" C-sections are on the rise. Wang says comments he has heard suggest that some might be scheduled too early so Mom can fit maternity leave into her work schedule.

What needs to change in our culture for people to accept birth as a process we can't control? The same mindset that leads some women to ask for an elective surgical delivery at 36 weeks' gestation is the same one that leads other women to sue when an unhealthy baby is delivered.

There are no guarantees in birth. Quite the opposite in fact. Birth is an unpredictable and sometimes risky proposition.

But so much is made of our ability to control reproduction -- its prevention and occurrance, the starting and ending times of labor, the pain associated with labor, early determination of the gender and genetic profile of the baby -- that the "natural" (i.e. unpredictable, unforecastable) aspect of pregnancy and childbirth is forgotten.

This reminds me of a family in the town where I grew up. They had a pet cougar. They had raised it from infancy and had it declawed. Their yard had a high fence, through which you would see the adults wresting with the cat in play. You would also see them rubbing it, much as you would a cat. Then one day it saw the neighbor boy running in his back yard, jumped the fence, and nearly chewed off his leg before they got the boy away. I babysat him. His leg is scarred for life.

Now this could have happened to the boy anyway. If he was hiking in the west, say. It would be sad no matter the circumstance. But it was more shocking for the friendly situation suddenly turning violent, the animal you've petted and fed suddenly ripping muscle from bone.

We need to keep in mind that pregnancy may be profiled and measured, labor started and stopped, but the process still has teeth and will occasionally bite people. There is no way to avoid it. Premature babies will be born; congenital defects will happen. But we can avoid creating bad situations by respecting reproduction's wild and natural origins.