That time where November 7th and December 7th delivered one day after the other…
A lot of people who are interviewing me as their doula ask me if I have someone else with the same due date as them. Or due the same week as them. They always seem concerned when I say I do, but that I am not worried.
I have had clients go into labour on subsequent days, but never the ones who were actually due at the same time. Most doulas joke that it is the clients who are due two weeks apart that will always cause the problems. In this situation, one client was at 41 weeks and the other at 37!
Considering that an estimated due date is just that (an estimation) and that babies are normally expected to arrive somewhere between week 37 and 42, I almost always have overlap with my clients. That said, so far no two of my clients have gone into labour at the same time yet… but I consider it inevitable, just as it is inevitable that at some point I might be down with some sort of illness, have a family commitment, etc.
Preparing for all of these eventualities is one of the things I plan for the most in terms of making sure I have a different backup for each woman and staying in close contact the last few weeks of pregnancy.
One year, I had two clients due April 14. I was super stressed about how crazy things were going to be in mid-April, to the point of having bad dreams where everyone went into labour simultaneously. In the end, neither of them even ended up having a baby in April! The first one had hers at the end of March and the second at the beginning of May.
In fact, my own babies both made super surprise appearances at 32 and 31 weeks! Sometimes people ask me what happens if they go into labour before the “on call” period starts. In fact, I am pretty much “on call” for you from the moment you decide to have me as your doula, and if your babies decide that they can’t wait any longer before meeting you, I will just be (a little) surprised but still do all I can to be there. For me, “on call” just means that I am expecting that you may go into labour at any time, and if it happens unexpectedly, well, sometimes birth is about embracing the unexpected…
So if you call me to ask “At the ultrasound my doctor said we should move the due date two days earlier, are you still free?”, expect to hear a deep belly laugh… because I know that birth is unpredictable and I am planning to be there no matter when- two days early, two weeks early, or even two months early!