Trendy mothers pay 'extra' to have babies on January 1

It does sound fancy and makes for a good conversation starter when you say you were born on New Year day or January 1. But is being born on such a day, so big a deal? Going by the current trend in childbirth in Karnataka, this seems to be a very important achievement.

Seven children were born in Bengaluru’s renowned Apollo Cradle Hospital on January 1, 2017; out of which only two were through a normal delivery, the rest of the births were conducted via caesarean as demanded by the mothers. Five children were born in Rainbow hospital on New Year’s day, out of them four were born via caesarean and only one was a normal delivery.

To-be mothers on any normal day usually opt for caesareans when there is a medical emergency and on advice of their doctors in case of complications. But here the case is different, to-be mothers were asking their doctors to hurry up their delivery to sync with the New Year and some of them even resorted to inducing labour forcefully, despite having a preset delivery date. Doctors were reported to have charged extra for complying with such request.

This trend is quite common abroad. But clearly we can see the trend catching on in India. The mothers are paying a huge ‘price’ for the delivery of their babies on New Year.

It leads us to question the amount of risk mothers are willing to put themselves in, all in the name of a trend. Manipulating a natural process just to boast of a special birth date is quite worrying. Have we stooped to such levels to for a few minutes of fame?

Here is a list of births reported in Karnataka on January 1, 2017

• mother
• child
• pregnancy
• delivery
• new year