Special Delivery

Our baby was due yesterday, and has not yet arrived. My head of department (who is also a mother of four) informed me with a smile that late arrival is positively correlated with bad teenage behaviour. On the other hand, missing deadlines can often be optimal, so I’m hopeful that this is in fact a good sign that s/he has things in perspective. 

So while G. and I wait for bubs to make his/her way into the world, I thought I’d turn to the research to see what I could learn about its expected due date.

• Today is Valentine’s Day, on which the birth rate typically goes up by 3%. 
• We’re still a bit away from April Fool’s Day, on which the birth rate typically goes down by 12%. 
• We’re only three days from the next weekend, on which the birth rate typically goes down by 29%.
• The Baby Bonus will increase by a couple of hundred dollars on March 20. So maybe we should try to hang on for another five weeks, as people did when it was first introduced.
• Fortunately, the obstetricians don’t hold their annual conference at this time of year, so we shouldn’t be disrupted by that, as some people are.
• We’re also lucky that the next Millennium isn’t due for a while, since that tends to be associated with an uptick in births.
• The next full moon is on March 3, which will have precisely no effect.