Happy New Year! 2012 was full of joyous births, healthy babies and happy mamas.
I don’t consider myself a numbers person. Math and I don’t get along. I’m embarrassed to admit I sometimes have to count on my fingers. However, I do find numerology fascinating. I don’t believe it to be scientific or fact based, but, like astrology, it’s an interesting coincidence of observations.
And it’s just fun when a baby’s birthday has sequential numbers like 8/9/10, or inverted numbers like 01/01/10, or patterns like 2/4/06, or 3/6/09 or 1/2/12. Or if the month and day added together equal the year like or 9/3/12 or 10/2/12 (I delivered babies on both these dates this year). Or when the birthday matches the baby’s weight like 10/10 and 10 lbs, 10 oz. This year the birthday 12/12/12 was considered to be an especially lucky birthday because it’s the last time for almost a century that a date will have 3 of the same number. We had a 12/12/12 baby born with another midwife at the birth center this year. One of my mommies had her baby on 12/20/2012 at the birth center. The most memorable birth date I had this year took place on the day of the Mayan calendar’s apocalypse: 12/21/12 and the baby was born at 2:12 PM. Later my client’s mother told me that the baby’s great-grandfather was born on 12/12/21. That’s just cool!
Now for the factual numbers I set out to talk about in this post–my statistics for 2012. As primary midwife I attended 60 births this year; 45 at the birth center and 15 at homes. Of these births 4 mamas transported from the birth center to the hospital during labor–all had vaginal deliveries. One mom transported from home to the hospital after her delivery and was home again in a few hours. Of the 60 mamas 23 were first time mothers (primiparas), 33 were having subsequent babies (multiparas), and 4 were grand-mulitparas (having their 5th or higher baby). All 5 transports were primiparas. I also assisted at 18 other births and was a doula for 2 births (one in hospital, one at home), making for 80 total births in 2012.
In writing this I see how many of this year’s numbers are divisible by 5 (60, 45, 15, 5) and, in numerology the year 2012 is 5 (all multiple digit numbers are reduced to one number by adding the individual numbers 2+0+1+2=5). Another fun coincidence.