Here you are 41 weeks pregnant. Looking back you probably thought pregnancy might last forever. Without a doubt, pregnancy morphs time perception almost every day! Time is still bending. One Time Warp may have been obvious in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy if you had morning sickness. Another Time Warp is waiting until 18-22 weeks pregnant to even feel a small movement of your baby.

Time warps during pregnancy, certainly throughout The Birth and definitely for the first seven weeks post-birth, until your baby smiles. Baby brain is not quite the same. Baby brain is a bit of a ‘duh’ or ‘can’t think straight’. Time Warp is more like ‘I don’t feel like myself’ or ‘I’m not in control here’. 41 weeks pregnant can definitely be in that Time Warp due to the pressure you can feel from your obstetrician or midwife about being ‘late’ or ‘past your due date’. You can feel anxious that something might be ‘wrong’.

Baby Center’s post on 41 weeks pregnant puts you face to face with those anxieties:

‘Most healthcare providers won’t let you wait more than two weeks past your due date to give birth because it puts you and your baby at increased risk for complications. After 42 weeks your labor is more likely to be prolonged or stalled; both you and your baby have an increased risk of injury during a vaginal delivery, and there’s a greater risk of stillbirth.’

Those problems are unnerving! So what should you do?

What To Expect post for 41 weeks pregnant approaches this week a bit differently. Instead of focusing on potential problems, ‘in fact, 70% of post-term pregnancies aren’t actually late at all but a miscalculation of the time of conception.’

The suggestion from What to Expect is to stay busy.

Birthing Better families want to add at 41 weeks pregnant:

Without a doubt Birthing Better families who found themselves still pregnant at 41 weeks had this to say:

  • Keep using your skills when you have Braxton-Hicks contractions
  • Begin to ask yourself this important question: ‘What do you want to do now?’ 
  • Ask that question and ‘choose’ what you want to do right then. In other words ‘Stay in the Now’ (one of our eBooks)
  • Do not fall into the trap of ‘I can’t be bothered’ or ‘I don’t know’. 
  • Time passes whether you ‘choose’ what you want to do now or not. The difference is simple. When you consciously choose what you are doing rather than just letting time pass, you will be much less tired once birth begins to unfold.

Delays in Life happen whether you are waiting to go into labor or be induced or whether you are waiting for your child to grow out of a phase! The best any of us can do is use skills that keep us focused, centered, less anxious and irritable and more accepting of life as it’s unfolding.

Common Knowledge Trust and Birthing Better families want to gift you one of the eBooks on Sustainable Breathing if you haven’t already been working with Birthing Better skills. At least we can help you stay balanced and calmer.

Birth breathing methodBreathing Sustainable, Adaptable, Usable

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.

40 weeks pregnant

42 weeks pregnant