Armchair philosophy on labor and newborns

updated to add #4 and #5

Like the philosophers of old, I have been thinking deep thoughts and hypothesizing without any scientific grounds whatsoever.
Tell me what you think, or what you think you know. Better yet, share some of your own untested and unresearched hypotheses!

Unresearched hypothesis #1:

I spent much of the last week doing chores that rarely get done: I scrubbed down the couches and the kitchen cabinets. I did the doors, the stove (even the drawer on the bottom); the front of the refrigerator; the dishwasher, which isn’t hooked up yet but stands in the kitchen and therefore needed to be wiped down, etc. I sent the children outside and did all the jobs that require bending and squatting and crawling about on all fours. The jobs that I usually tell them to do.

Why do women feel such a need to clean and scrub before the baby arrives? Why does the nesting instinct so often manifest itself in chores that require a pregnant body to do things that pregnant bodies just don’t do well?

My thoroughly unresearched conclusion: I think it’s more than a desire to get ahead on housework and greet the baby with a clean and sanitary house. Midwives and birthing books have long recommended exercises that require these very positions and movements to help coax the baby into the optimal position for birth. I think this God-given instinct to clean serves the less obvious and perhaps more important purpose of positioning the baby for birth.

Unresearched hypothesis #2:

Has anyone else noticed that women tend to start feeling desperate to deliver about 2 weeks before labor kicks in? I wonder if the pregnancy hormones start declining at about this point. The mother would progressively feel less and less pregnant, and therefore less content with the fact that she is, nonetheless, extremely pregnant. Maybe after about 2 weeks, the hormone levels would be so low that the body no longer believes it is pregnant and expels the baby.

Makes sense, right? Does anyone know if it’s true?

Unresearched hypothesis #3:

This one is courtesy of my sister. I like it too.

Have you ever thought it strange that a baby who has been sucking her thumb in the womb since 10 weeks can’t seem to get it into her mouth with any regularity for the first several weeks after birth? What about the comical way they flail their arms about?

My sister’s theory is that they are far more coordinated in the womb. Remember what happens when you pick up an empty milk jug, expecting the weight of a full jug? Your arm and the jug both go flailing wildly through the air – like an infant.

Maybe the baby needs time to adjust to the reduced resistance of air rather than water, and to the open space outside the womb.

Unresearched hypothesis #4:

Do babies cry in the womb? At first, you have to wonder why they ever would. They are always warm, always full, always being held. What more could a baby want?

But they have a sin nature from the start; surely they can find something to complain about. And I think they do. Have you ever noticed how a baby in the womb will sometimes do a hard, rhythmic kick for 10 or more motions? Doesn’t that look suspiciously like the little tantrums they have after they’re born?

Unresearched hypothesis #5:

We all notice that our babies seem to have a talent for waking up hungry just as we sit down to a meal. I think I know why.

It is well established that babies get a blood sugar boost soon after the mother eats; in effect, they get to eat, too. So maybe they learn the schedule – or even the routine and the noises. After all, they can hear from inside the womb. Maybe they get hungry on our schedule because they have already become accustomed to eating on our schedule.

Related posts:

1. No labor, but…
2. Thoughts on labor
3. False labor and more on pregnancy
4. Not yet…
5. Labor and birth: what to wear?