How many weeks is 9 months?

This is a personal vendetta of mine and does not have to do with a baby investigation, but it does have to do with the pregnancy experience. Normal people talk about women being pregnant for 9 months, but as all pregnant woment know, months are so last season, and we only talk about our baby in terms of weeks or days at this point. Typically, you realize that you're pregnant around "5 weeks," but what does that really mean? Does that mean that the baby is 5 weeks old, measuring age from conception? Well, no. Surprisingly, and trickily, the weeks refer to the time since the first day of a woman's last menstrual period. This makes sense, since doctors can't ask you when you last had you know what or when you conceived, that would get them nowhere. They are left with the question of "when did you start your last menstrual period?" This is a question women get asked about a million times in their life because, for some reason, the doctor's office always wants to know. I have a friend who refers to it as her LMP... So, if 5 weeks pregnant actually equals 5 weeks since the first day of your LMP, then the baby was not conceived 5 weeks ago nor have you actually been pregnant for 5 weeks. In actuality, most women ovulate, or release an egg, approximately 2 weeks after the first day of their period. The released egg only lives 12 to 24 hours, and that is the time when fertilization and conception can occur. Thus, "5 weeks pregnant" actually means that you conceived approximately 3 weeks ago.

Now that we've covered that, let's review the fact that an infant is considered full-term when delivered at 40 weeks. Well, back when I was a normal person, I thought that 9 months estimated to 36 weeks. So how does 9 months equal 40 weeks? Are we really pregnant for 10 months? Absolutely not, thank goodness! First, most months are actually longer than 4 weeks - except for February, which has 28 days, but if a month is 30 or 31 days, that really calculates to almost 4-and-a-half weeks in the month. Secondly, as discussed earlier, 40 weeks pregnant really translates to 38 weeks of actual pregnancy, since conception. As you remember, the first 2 weeks were actually the time from the first day of your last menstrual period to when you ovulated and conceived. So, when you're 20 weeks pregnant and "halfway through your pregnancy;" you have actually been pregnant for just 18 weeks of your total 38 and still have one more week before reaching the true halfway point. The funny thing is, when in the midst of pregnancy, I always know how many weeks I am, but I have to stop and think about how many months along I am - for instance, the first trimester, or first 3 months, are complete at about 14 weeks. Tricky. Nevertheless, in the magic of modern medical terminology, 40 weeks pregnant really does translate into 9 months of pregnancy. I'm enjoying every day, especially now that I'm in my second trimester!

Waking and Sleeping...and not so much sleeping

 Mark Twain said that "A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother." Let's be honest: the bother comes in the middle of the night. Everyone dreads the newborn's nightly feedings every two hours and wants their baby to start sleeping through the night at a miraculously early age. And, doesn't it always seem like newborns are sleeping all day to get rested for their late nights of being night owls? The funny thing is, when a new mom tells you her baby is "sleeping through the night," she could mean the baby is sleeping 5 or 6 hours straight (say 10pm to 4 or 5am); whereas, if an adult without children talks about "sleeping through the night," she probably means a good 8 hours (say 10pm to 6 or 7am). Perspective can really change. I think God's way of preparing you for this magical time of twilight activities is shown by the fact that I now, with my pregnant bladder, wake up every 4 hours to use the restroom, no matter what I do to try warding that off before I go to sleep at night. It's like clockwork, but I remind myself to be thankful that I can go back to sleep after I get up temporarily and enjoy this time when it's only every 4 hours instead of every 2.

Okay, so is there anything we can do during pregnancy to help your baby have an easier transition to sleeping through the night...?
Here's the fact of the matter - experts report that as early as 16 weeks after conception, babies have clear sleep and wake patterns, or circadian rhythms, that start resembling their newborn patterns of sleeping and waking. So, they are already getting set in their ways and sleep patterns during the second half of pregnancy, and those patterns carry over after they are born. The problem is, when babies are in utero, they get rocked to sleep all day while mom is moving and walking around. Then when mom is sleeping and still at night, babies in the womb wake up and are moving around in there. It's always pretty dark in there, so they don't know the difference between night and day. Thus, it makes sense that babies develop a sleep pattern of being awake at night and sleeping during the day. What a difficult pattern to break as newborns! Knowing this, I formulated a plan (very much pre-pregnancy) to help my baby to develop a circadian rhythm more conducive to typical life outside mom's womb, and more similar to my own preferred sleep pattern :). I couldn't come up with a reasonable way of rocking the baby to sleep at night - my ideas of a vibrating tummy-wrap or a water bed just didn't seem feasible, although I may toss and turn in my sleep enough to do the trick. However, at the same time babies start developing their circadian rhythm, they are also becoming responsive to light and dark. Even though their eyelids are closed, they can sense the presence of bright lights versus dark. So, if you shine a flashlight on your belly, babies will move in response to the light. To help my baby wake up during the day, I bought a flashlight to use whenever I think it's time for baby to stop daytime napping. Now, this practice of shining a flashlight on my baby to wake the baby up makes some people nervous, like my mom, who think I may be stressing the baby out or something. Taking that into consideration, I only do this occasionally, not even every day, so I see it as testing the baby's reflexes. Additionally, I'm using a normal flashlight that is not super bright. Besides, I'm helping the baby to prepare for an easier transition to after-birth sleeping patterns :)

What Mama eats, Baby eats

When an expectant mother reads any book on pregnancy or any pamphlet on nutrition to help her little bundle of joy, it is incredibly Overwhelming. There's pages and pages of details describing each area of important nutrients to help all the various aspects of fetal development. How does cantaloupe fall into the green leafies category? How am I supposed to remember 12 food groups and which fish are safe and which fish should be avoided and which fish should be eaten once a week? And how did fish end up being so important for a baby's brain development anyway? And on top of that, how am I supposed to fit all of them in a day's food allowance while consuming just 300 extra calories and keeping my sanity? So, can I just tell you that one night, my pregnancy hormones combined with my overwhelming sense of what all the baby needs nutritionally for proper development overpowered me, and when I looked in the fridge to decide what I wanted to eat for dinner, all I could do was start crying. I laid on the couch and cried while my poor, sweet husband comforted me and then fixed us some dinner. Then my friend sent me some pages from a book about the importance of eating raw egg yoks, cod liver oil, and liver everyday of your pregnancy (GROSS!). Plus, it advised to eliminate sugar, white flour, oils, and caffeine...does that sound like some sort of hazing to anyone else? An initiation into motherhood, perhaps? I thought the morning sickness, nighttime heat flashes, peeing every four hours, and then the actual birth were maybe enough of an intitiation. What about all that first trimester morning sickness and fatigue? Even when the book says not to worry if you can't get all that healthy food eaten in the midst of first trimester ickiness, somehow that does not make me feel any better after reading the pages of nutritional needs for my baby, who is developing all his/her vital organs and brain during those first 3 months. Expectant mothers are NOT supposed to be stressed; I know that - it raises their cortisol levels, which in turn raises their baby's cortisol levels, which can stress the baby and lead to emotional and behavioral issues in a child as late as 4.5-years-old.

So, my solution, knowing what I do about the rapid rate of prenatal development, particularly during the first trimester, was to eat "healthy" and take my prenatal vitamin every day. I also tried to make the most of opportunities to eat seafood, fish listed as safe in at least one of my readings, such as tilapia, cod, and catfish. I experienced light morning sickness, which I combated by keeping a small tupperware of goldfish by my bed in order to eat crackers as soon as I woke up in the morning, before getting out of bed. I now loooove goldfish! I also started craving orange juice like crazy! Conveniently, my normally strong sweet tooth was much diminished, and I started enjoying salty foods more than usual, like potato chips (not so convenient for trying to eat healthy ;). Now, here's where the psychology experiment comes into play. According to a large body of research, tastes and smells that babies are exposed to in utero are then preferred as late as 5.5 months after birth (ex. Mennella, Jagnow, & Beauchamp, 2001; Varendi, Porter, & Winberg, 2002). If you're wondering what babies are smelling, they're smelling the amniotic fluid, which has been reported to smell like coffee or Indian food at birth, based on what the mother had consumed earlier that day. So, I'm expecting my baby to like goldfish and orange juice. As I'm moving into my second trimester, I'm also trying to eat a variety of flavors and vegetables, so that my baby will be exposed to a diverse array of foods - this is my attempt to make my baby less of a picky eater and less likely to develop particular, strong allergies. Of course, I can't report on the outcome of this personal study at this time :) More to come!

An Introduction: Piaget and a Precious Soul

First of all, please do not get the wrong idea from the blog title. We did not get pregnant so that I could run some experiments from home. I do not view this baby as a grand experiment. I have basically wanted to have a baby since I was 6 years old, when my mom was expecting the birth of my little sister. Then, when my sister was born, it was confirmed in my mind that I wanted one of my own. When my sister got older, I tried to talk my parents into becoming foster parents to infants so that I could have a baby around all the time. My mom did not buy into it since she said I would be at school all day, so she would actually be the one taking care of the babies. I didn't lose heart in my attempts at persuasion. However, now that my husband and I are expecting our first child, it seems like a giant, lifelong dream has come true. God has entrusted us with a precious soul to care for and cherish for the rest of our lives.

Now, at the same time, I do plan on testing some theories that I have come across over the years of my studies in developmental psychology. After all, Jean Piaget, the famous developmental psychologist whose findings are still studied by psychologists and educators everywhere, conducted the bulk of his research simply with his own three children. His many contributions to the field of developmental psychology came from a subject pool of 3! So, if he can make major contributions with an N=3, than perhaps I can make some minor findings of interest to a few with an N=1. I absolutely love the study of infant and child development. In the eighth grade, we were given the assignment of a major research speech in our English class. We could choose any subject we wanted, so I chose "how holding a baby affects his/her development." I fell in love with the topic and knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the field of child development. Thus, I discovered the pathway of majoring in psychology to follow such a pursuit, and God directed my steps to where it seemed as if I fell into a phD program for developmental psychology. I've enjoyed infant research and teaching Developmental Psychology to college students for the past several years.

Whenever I teach about prenatal development and childhood learning environments, I always talk about what I will do when I have kids of my own and what mini-experiments I will try on my own little blessing. Now that I actually have a little person growing inside of me, some of my viewpoint has changed but I still have lots of plans for trying to apply research findings to real life. This blog will be dedicated to chronicling those attempts and findings and taking an honest look at the joy and emotions of new life.