Butterflies and Due Dates

As our dues dates get closer and then pass us by it is so tempting to seek ways to help encourage things along.  This might help give us some more thoughtful patience:

Caterpillars spend most of their days crawling around eating leaves. Somehow, and we
don't know why, they know when it's time to build their cocoon, and they know when it's
time to come out. As a child, we might have come upon a cocoon with a butterfly almost
ready to come out. We might have heard a loud noise from the beating of wings against
the side of the cocoon, and as children we didn't know any better, so we might have been
tempted to “help out” the butterfly. But we all know now that butterflies who are “helped
out” early have a much tougher time. They beat their wings against the side of the cocoon
to remove moisture from their wings. It's part of an important process for the butterfly.
Humans are similar to butterflies in this way. Unless there is a medical reason, it's best to
wait until the baby is ready to be born. It's tempting to “help out” butterflies and our birth
statistics show it's tempting to “help out” babies early, but babies and butterflies do best
when they do it without intervention/induction.
By Teri Schilling