Full Moon

Type “full moon” into Google and you’ll come up with any number of stories about what a full moon does to people.  There are the stories about psychiatric ward patients becoming extra… psychiatric, increased accidents and visits to the emergency room, and then there are the stories about women going into labor more often – and even more to the point, a higher statistically significant number of women whose water breaks near a full moon if their due date is soon.

I looked back at the dates that Julia and Raven were born, and ironically enough, even though *I* was the cause of my water breaking with Julia, she actually was born on a full moon.  My water broke with Raven all on its very own, and she wasn’t born anywhere near a full moon.  So, no significance there…

… but, then we have the case I’m in now.  Tonight is the full moon.  Adam, at my urging… my insistence… is in San Diego at Craft Brewers’ Conference until tomorrow night.  I’m within two weeks of my due date – ten days out from my C-section date.  So I have to wonder, what are the chances that my water would break tonight while I’m home along with the girls? 

There is a lot of debate about whether a woman’s body can be in synch with lunar cycles.  Some think that maternity wards have extra nurses on hand near full moons because more women think they are in actual labor and head to the hospital and are instead experiencing Braxton Hicks.  On the other side of the coin, there are the believers that think that there are more nurses because more babies are born.

It’s hard to find a site that shows any scientific proof… there are published medical articles that suggest as such, and then as many that try to debunk the theory… this is left to one of those ‘old wives’ tales’ sort of things like “heartburn during pregnancy makes for a baby with a full head of hair” (true with my first two!!!) or “higher heartbeats means a girl instead of boy” (true with my first two!) – but you can always find something that speaks to the opposite.

My apologies for not posting links… but I wanted to post this blog post today in the event that there was a remote chance that Baby #3 was born in the next few days… I wanted to remember when the full moon was and whether or not it affected the birth of this child.

So I guess tonight we’ll just wait and see… you can bet I will not do anything stupid to invoke my water breaking or going into labor, but at the same time, it’s not as if I can hide from the moon.  And, considering that I live in Arvada now, I’m that much closer to it – being mile high and all.  Heh.

Look for the full moon tonight in your time zone – tonight is a “supermoon” in that it’s the largest and closest full moon this year – in the states, we’ll see it anywhere from 11:35:06 PM for Eastern (and counting backwards… 10:35:06 PM Central, 9:35:06 PM Mountain… etc.).  Considering that I should still be awake at that time tonight, I’m heading out to take pictures!  Enjoy the full moon tonight!

erin