Don't Tell Anybody Your Real Due Date

And other information to keep private, for your own sanity's sake

Around this time last year, right before I woke up, I had a weird dream. I was being led into my bathroom by an invisible entity and on the back of the toilet was a positive pregnancy test.

It wasn't an odd thing to dream about. I'd been tracking my cycle and taking pregnancy tests-- the cheap strips you can buy in a pack of 50-- fairly often since my husband and I had decided to pull the goalie and see what happened. Because I was 37 and he was past 40 at the time, I assumed that it would take us at least several months to conceive, if having a baby was in the cards for us at all.

Anyway, that morning, about five weeks after I had my IUD taken out and saluted by the midwife at my OB-GYN's office ("Thank you for your service," she said, holding it up.), Josh and I planned on playing tennis. I was on my way out the door when I thought about the dream, and even though I'd taken a test the day before and the result was negative, I thought, eh, why not?

There was a second pink line on the test. It was positive.

I took a second one. Same thing.

This was a mindfuck. I was glad that it happened at all, but had mentally budgeted for a lot more time in the liminal space between not-parents and expecting-parents. I thought I was geriatric! I thought it would be a whole... process. We had a trip to the mountains planned like, the next week.

I called Josh into the bathroom and started crying. We looked at each other with excitement and fear, like the lightly pee-soaked strips were a winning lottery ticket and the media and obscure grifter cousins were about to show up at our door any second.

Because I'd been keeping track of my body, I knew how to calculate what my "due date" would be with the information that I had, and discovered to my delight that 40 weeks on from the first date of my last period was Halloween. When an ultrasound confirmed that due date, we started privately referring to the baby as Halloweeno.

As soon as we were comfortable publicly discussing the pregnancy (a few weeks past my 20 week scan in June), I mentioned the due date constantly. Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Here comes a spooky little Scorpio. Witch baby, pumpkin baby, etc etc etc. To be fair, Halloween is an incredibly fun due date, and it's fun to tell very California-fied people you're pregnant with a Scorpio and see them widen their eyes and say hoo good luck.

My whole year was leading to my due date. Future grandparents made travel plans and hotel reservations around the due date. I scheduled maternity leave from my podcast Hysteria. I ordered a couple of little tiny Halloween-themed onesies, the tiniest and most adorable things I'd ever seen. Have you ever seen a skeleton costume in size Newborn? My god.

Amateur moves. I learned, too late, that pregnancy is an intense time where even well-meaning questions or attempts to schedule the most minor of events can send a person into a spiral. I learned that the closer things get to Go Time, the more real the frightening reality-- I am going to be a mother for the rest of my life-- would magnify any prodding into pressure. I learned that trying to "plan" around a birth was like trying to plan the weather. I don't know of a single person whose pregnancy and birth went exactly as they planned, and often, the harder they planned, the more birth fucked with them.

I also learned, too late, that first babies like to take their sweet-ass time. A 2001 study found that only half of pregnant women having their first child had given birth by 40 weeks and 5 days and 75% had given birth by 41 weeks and 2 days, which means that the "real" expected delivery date for first time moms was actually more like 41 weeks. And a good portion of women go for even longer than that, and they're totally fine!

Of course, Halloween came and went, and of course the baby did not arrive "on time," and I was enormous and uncomfortable and anxious and everybody and their cousin who follows me on Twitter knew that the baby was running late. It was a stressful time. I kept imagining that random contractions were labor. I thought my water had broken when actually I'd just peed my pants a little. I was preoccupied with the possibility that out-of-town visitors might arrive when I was only a day or two postpartum, something I'd wanted to avoid. Nobody did anything wrong; plans were made around dates that I gave them. People checking in on me weren't doing anything but showing an interest in my life and excitement about our growing family. But it stressed me out.

The mistake was nobody's but mine. I should not have told people my "real" due date.

If I have another baby at some point, I will probably either be extremely vague about my expected due date or just make one up that's at least two weeks out from my actual due date. I'm not giving away my entire plan here because I know my mother reads this and I know that she'll try to make her own calculations-- nice try, mom!

I would encourage other expecting mothers to consider the same. Due dates are essentially meaningless; only 3-5% of babies are born on their actual due date. Due dates create a sense of a deadline in a process that respects no deadline. They add pressure to parents who don't need the pressure. Some birth professionals have been lobbying to get rid of the phrase "due date" entirely. What is gained by sharing the "due date" besides stress and pressure? Your doctor and birth professionals should know; nobody else needs to.

And while we're on the subject of pregnancy infosec, here are some other things that need not be shared far and wide prior to the birth, because they often invite unhelpful commentary and unsolicited opinions:

• the baby's name (people are dicks)

• how you're going to feed the baby (breast, formula, combination-- you don't need some random aunt's opinion on this)

• when you're in labor/ in the hospital

This last one is pretty important. The labor process can last days, especially a labor that is induced and leads to an emergency C-section (scary, but not that uncommon!), and the last thing you want in the mix with the terror and frustration of a slowly proceeding labor followed by a surprise surgery is a barrage of texts asking if the baby is here yet. I've been on the other side of knowing when a friend was in labor or in the hospital for a scheduled C-section, and when I wouldn't hear from them for several hours, my brain would race through all of the worst case scenarios.

By the time I went to the hospital to give birth, six days after my "due date," I had learned my lesson. Josh and I told as few people as we possibly could where we were during the 28 hours we were in the hospital until I was minutes from giving birth. Then, right after she was born and both of us were safe, and our loved ones got a nice photo of me looking like absolute poached ass, extremely exhausted with a baby on my chest and a hospital robe draped over my nudity. My loved ones didn't have to stress about gaps in communication and we didn't have to stress about stressing them out.

A friend and former Daily Beast colleague was still giving out assignments and sending out text messages to her pals like nothing was amiss while she was in labor. I'm still in awe of that feat. That's how you play the game on expert mode.

For family members who might feel hurt by being kept in the dark: You don't want to see how the sausage is made; you don't need to know when a person giving birth is "transitioning" or starting to push; she needs all of her energy focusing on the task at hand and she needs her partner to be there for her, not texting updates to people.

There's nothing wrong with anybody choosing to share any of the information I'm discouraging; it's your life and your pregnancy, your family and your friends. Some people like to have support from friends during labor because the part before it really starts to hurt is actually pretty boring.

I'd simply like future parents to consider being more reserved with information around pregnancy, because once that horse is out of the barn, it's going to stand under your bedroom window neighing WHERE'S THE BABY WASNT SHE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE? and MY BOYFRIEND'S EX WAS NAMED PAIGE AND SHE WAS INSANE and BREAST IS BEST FOR THE BABY IT'S HARD BUT YOU HAVE TO TRY and WHY HAVEN'T WE HEARD FROM YOU IS SHE PUSHING YET?

Trust me, you don't need it.

Image via Shutterstock