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!