Caden's Arrival

He came crying, as if he was telling us he had been through a lot before he arrived. His head was slightly elongated as a result of the process.

Bushy hair, triangular-shaped lips, tiny hands and legs. He looks like many other babies actually, as I had found out in the nursery where he cried together with many other baby friends. But to us, he looks cute and handsome no matter what. He is our boy, Chan Caden.

Oh yes, if you are a 4D fan and hope that Caden will bring you good luck, he is born on the 2nd of August, so buy 0208. His weight is 3.6kg, so buy 3600. His length is 53cm and head circumference is 36cm, so buy 5336. He stayed with his mother in room number 3161 in hospital. My car number plate is SGF863F, so buy 0863. Pick your choice. Sure strike one!

P/S: It is such a coincident that 3 and 6 appears so many times in front of us.

What determines the birthday of my baby?

Going by our gynecologist’s medical calculation, our baby Caden is due to be born on the 4th of August. And she said the baby can arrive as early as two weeks before the calculated due date. Reason being a full term pregnancy takes 40 weeks. It starts when the mother last menstruated. But the baby can only be conceived roughly two weeks after menstruation.

Anyway, both my wife and I have taken leave from work in anticipation of Caden’s arrival. However, it’s just one more week to the due date and Caden seems to be a little reluctant to come out to see the world. And we are getting anxious by the minute. We have been talking and singing to him and practicing whatever we knew about Neuro-linguistic Programming. Sometimes he gave us a kick as if to tell us to wait some more. Sometimes he didn’t.

Then we thought about induced-birth. Then we thought about how a person’s birthday affects one’s destiny. See, according to Chinese geomancy practices, a person’s birthday and time will give that person a birth code number (生辰八字). This code number is used extensively in fortune-telling and baby names-giving as well. It probably has no scientific evidence. But to people who believe in astronomy and feng shui, this code number is a big thing.

So what actually determines the birthday of a baby? Medical science will explain that the baby will be born when the baby’s body is fully developed. The mother’s body senses that the baby is ready and her body releases some relevant hormones for contraction to take place. If the baby is still not born by the end of 40 weeks, or ultra-sound scan shows that the environment in the womb has already deteriorated, an induced-birth has to be performed.

Of course, in some cases, the water bag burst early and the baby is born prematurely. Or in the case of a ‘breech’ where the baby’s buttocks, knees or feet will appear first during delivery, both mother and baby might have difficulty breathing as the baby grows larger. In this case, Cesarean section may have to be done.

Maybe a more appropriate question to ask is: Who actually determines the birthday of a baby? Is it God? Is it Karma? Or, in the case of induced-birth, the doctor or the parents?

If we decided to induce the birth of Caden, his birthday is obviously chosen by us. Does that mean we write his birth code number and hence his destiny as well?