HALLOWEEN SCARES BABIES AWAY

On a warm evening 24 years ago, after all the trick or treaters had gone home for the night, Tom and I decided to walk downtown to see how the adults were spending Halloween.  We wound up in one of the local bars and amused ourselves people watching. 

As I was nine months pregnant,  I ended up with some tinny tasting grapefruit juice to drink.  Tom had a glass or two of wine.  Some people thought I was in costume as a pregnant woman - I was comically huge with our twins - Tom assured them it was all real and said he had forbidden me to have Halloween babies.

We walked back home and went to bed.  An hour later, shortly after midnight, my water broke.  I always thought it was pretty funny that I managed to wait until after Halloween to have my twins, but research at the Yale School of Public Health has shown that births dip a full 11.3% on October 31.  Not only do women avoid planned c-sections and induced births, but "spontaneous" births, go down, too, suggesting that there is something to a woman's preference for a birth date involved in triggering the necessary hormones.

So Happy Birthday Maggie and Zac and thanks for waiting until November to be born.  Your father would never have forgiven me.