Q.  What is your feeling about taking clients that have the same due date?

A.  I would actually prefer to have two clients with the same due date, as opposed to having clients with a two-week space between due dates.  It is speculated that only 5-10% of babies are born on their actual due dates -- that is maybe one out of ten women, so the chances of two women, with the same due date, having their babies at the same time is even less than that.  On a personal note, I have only ever had back-to-back/same-day births with clients where I thought there was a safe distance between due dates, but babies come when babies come -- they don't often get the memo about when they are "due."

Once a client of mine had a cesarean two weeks early for a medical issue (about 2 pm), and another client had her baby the same day (her due date), 6 minutes before midnight.

Second time I had a client go two days early; my back-up doula had a client go 18 days overdue (my back-up had to leave on day 16).  My back-up's client (whom I was now the doula for) was in the hospital working on day 2 of an induction.  My client went into spontaneous labor, and actually had her baby at about midnight.  Before I left, I went to pop into the other family's room, but their nurse assured me they were sleeping.  I got home (35 minutes away) and barely fell asleep when the phone rang.  I ran back to the hospital, very sleepy!  Baby was born about 12 hours later around 3 pm.

Third time I had a client go 16 days past her due date, and another client went a couple of days early.  Over-due mama delivered at about 10 pm; early mama called me at 1 in the morning stating her water broke.  Back to the old grindstone!

A few things you should know about due dates:

-What Goes in a Due Date?
-When is that Baby Due?
-ACOG Guidelines for Induction