All of my beloved pregnancy resources tell me that today, at 37 weeks, my little fetus is full term! Do I get to call him a baby instead of a fetus now? What exactly does full term mean? My understanding is that it means all of his organs are ready for life on the outside and that if he were born today, chances are he'd be just fine. That being said, all of the same resources are also very careful to say that he can still benefit from some extra time baking. I guess his lungs and brain are ready but not super ready or something. Regardless, I want him to stay in a little while longer. Primarily, of course, for his brain and lungs, but also for his future. (Yes I am very uncomfortable and would prefer to have my body back to myself but as you can tell I am incredibly selfless! Submit my name for mother of the year if you must.)
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What I imagine is happening to baby's brain.
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If you've ever read
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, you might recall the chapter on the Canadian hockey league and birthdays. Because my energy continues to decrease, my quotations from Wikipedia are going to slowly replace my own compositions.

The book begins with Gladwell's research on why a disproportionate number of elite Canadian hockey players are born in the first few months of the calendar year. The answer, he points out, is that since youth hockey leagues determine eligibility by calendar year, children born on January 1 play in the same league as those born on December 31 in the same year. Because children born earlier in the year are bigger and maturer than their younger competitors, they are often identified as better athletes, leading to extra coaching and a higher likelihood of being selected for elite hockey leagues. This phenomenon in which "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is dubbed "accumulative advantage" by Gladwell, while sociologist Robert K. Merton calls it "the Matthew Effect", named after a biblical verse in the Gospel of Matthew: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."[7] Outliers asserts that success depends on the idiosyncrasies of the selection process used to identify talent just as much as it does on the athletes' natural abilities.[7]
By extension, one would think that those students who are the oldest in the classroom will accumulate advantages over time. For instance, there is a lot of mental and physical development that goes on between the ages of 5 and 6 so a 6 yr old starting kindergarten is, in theory, better prepared to take on the "course work" than a 5 year old. Plus, boys mature way later anyways. Amirite ladies??
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Admittedly, it already makes me cry to think about sending him off to kindergarten.
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The cutoff date for starting kindergarten here is September 1st soooo therefore I'd like my baby born on or after this date so that he is set up for a lifetime of overachievement. Is that too much to ask? When I am sitting here still pregnant past 40 weeks, feel free to remind me that I asked for it.
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| 37 weeks. His lungs must be doing something because it's not possible for him to get any bigger. |
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