Legacy of Pregnancy
Almost 6 months late! GURC Trivia! I just found our notes while cleaning the office, and this was something I wanted to post back in March. :)
Our church’s ten-year anniversary was this last March and each small group was asked to prepare something for the program after the anniversary potluck. Sarah and I banded together and finally worked out something we had been wondering for a few years: has there ever been a point when there wasn’t someone pregnant in our church’s history? We created a poster board timeline that ended up being over 10 feet long and that showed who was pregnant when over the last 10 years. We did not do investigative research; we assumed 9 month pregnancies except where preterm delivery was known. Our church began with somewhere in the vicinity of 20 families, I believe, and is currently between 50 and 60 households.
After creating this piece of art (of which I couldn’t get any decent pictures, sorry), Sarah came up with these pieces of trivia, all of which were current as of March 2007, but are no longer as there are now 4 more pregnancies than there were then.
- In the ten years of our church, 32 babies have been born to active members.
- There have only been eight months total, in the past 10 years, during which no one was pregnant.
- From 1999 to 2007, there were only 2 instances of a “gap,” and they were both just under a month.
- The first two mothers on our timeline are now grandmothers, meaning that the first two children born in the church are now aunts.
- At one point in 2003 there were eight pregnant women in the church at one time.
- For a 3-year span from 2002 to 2004, 14 children, beginning with Natalie D., were born alternating girl/boy/girl/boy and so on. Jaeger Winckler broke the trend in 2005.
- Given the standard time frame of a 40-week pregnancy, in the 520-week history of our church more than 1,270 weeks of gestation have occurred.
- No year has seen fewer than two births.
- 2004 holds the record for 7 babies born in one year, and 6 of those were born in the first five months!
- Of the 32 births, 2 were delivered C-section and 3 were home births.
- Our chart contains a total of 18 unique mothers.
- The first two babies were born in April, which continued to be the most popular birth month (6 total) just edging out May and August, both with 5.
- No babies have been born in the month of September, but if Baby Palm is born on time, he will take care of that glaring oversight.
- In the full names of the 32 babies born into this church, the only unused letter is Q. Will Baby Palm take care of that glaring oversight as well?
- Eleven of the 32 babies born, or 1/3, were first-born children.
- Of the 32 babies, 15 were girls and 17 were boys.
This chart was documenting pregnancy primarily, but it is also worth noting that in those ten years 3 children joined families within the church through adoption. This chart only counted mothers who were pregnant while attending as members of our church and babies who were born while their parents were attending as members of our church.
2007 will be the first year to have only one baby born, unless Ilse makes an early appearance. If Friedrich had made it to term, 2007 would have had its quotient and the total of no-pregnant months would have been reduced by one. He is included in the totals and on the chart.
All pressure is off for now; but just keep in mind, we need someone else to add to the chart by the end of March! :)
