No Sex November

The poor August baby

Get pregnant in November and your baby will be due in August. According to some mothers this ought to strike fear into your heart! An August baby tends to start school with lower cognitive and motor skills - i.e. their ability to write their name, add up numbers and play hop-scotch (although not even September babies can manage all of these simultaneously). August born children go on to achieve lower academic grades and are thought to be up to 20% less likely to go to university than their September born peers.

How then, could my family be so thoughtlessly selfish in allowing me, my brother and both of my parents to be born in August? Thank goodness we all beat the odds, three undergraduate degrees and one masters between us, and we're all doing pretty well - phew! Of course the paths of our lives were determined by far more influential factors: socio-economic status, place of birth, schools, parental aspirations, health and so on.

Doubtless my life would have differed had I been born a month later. Perhaps I would have had more self-confidence at school, maybe I would have been the ringleader rather than the 'easily led', had different friends and approached my first year of university with more maturity. Probably not the latter, but I do remember the older girls at school carrying more weight (figuratively speaking) than others did socially. Perhaps my brother would have demonstrated his academic ability earlier rather than surprising us with his grades at the age of sixteen had he not been 11 and a half months younger than some of his classmates. We will never know, and personally I never think about it, there are simply more important things to worry about.

How easy is it to achieve?

For starters, the assumption that one can get pregnant in a chosen month is naive to say the least. Conception is the first hurdle at which most of us realise how unpredictable and uncontrollable pregnancy and parenting can be. For most women it takes several months to conceive. Hitting the 'right' month depends on having a predictable monthly cycle and scheduling sex at the right time.

In addition to this there is the question of due date, 1 in 13 babies in the UK is born before 37 weeks so if you really want to rule out a summer baby then you should hold off for the month of January too!

Let's not forget the potential for miscarriage - 1 in 4 if you account for different age groups and previous pregnancies. So if you conceive in December and are unfortunate enough to miscarry, are you really likely to wait until the following Christmas to try again?

Accounting for all these factors could lead you down a complicated route of scheduling based on academic calendars, pregnancy durations and probabilities of miscarriage. Good luck with that.

Of course it would be nice if we could all have our babies in September, we want to do whatever we can to give our children the best start in life - however small an impact it makes. But frankly, planning their birth month is difficult to achieve and not nearly as important as having healthy, happy and cared for children.

This article is a feature from the MUM.com Trusted Bloggers Club.

About the author

Siobhan Thomas

Siobhan left the corporate world behind when she had her first daughter in 2010. After that she got involved in Mum.co.uk and became Senior Editor in 2012. She now has two little girls and loves being a mum.

Click here to read my full biography.

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