Jennifer Connelly, 40, and her husband Paul Bettany have welcomed a new addition to their family – a baby girl! Agnes Lark was born on May 31st. Connelly had a scheduled, at home water birth. Scheduled births are becoming more and more common, particularly for busy couples like Connelly and Bettany, who want to assure that both parents will be on hand when the time comes.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are firmly against scheduling induced labor – or any use of labor inducing drugs that isn’t strictly necessary.
“ACOG is four-square against inducing labor just because you want the baby to be a Sagittarius,” Michael F. Greene, M.D., director of maternal-fetal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told FitPregnancy.com. “It should be for medical reasons.”
Inducing labor runs the risk of more complications and as much as a fifty percent high risk of eventual C Section. ACOG prefers to save induction for moments when the mother’s health is truly in jeopardy if she caries her child any longer.
This particular scheduled labor, however, seems to have gone off without a hitch. Agnes joins big brothers Stellan, seven and a half, and Kai, thirteen, Connelly’s son with David Dugan.
