Up until ten minutes ago, I had never heard a pregnancy referred to being 10 Months long. It’s always been 9 Months. Iv’e never known anyone to refer to it as 10 Months.
My sister in law mentioned something about 10 months, which prompted a question from me. She explained that it’s 40 weeks so that’s ten lunar months.
Ok, I agreed with the math and the lunar month thing*… but what freakin doctor EVER refers to it in lunar months??? Does he also try to sell some Magic Baby Crystals and Incense???
Then she says she’s always known a pregancy to be referred to as 10 months. Not 9. And that it is more popularly referred to as a 10 month thing.
She says any person who is pregnant will say it’s 10 months…
This is also the same fool who tried to argue that Love Bugs were created in a lab to combat the mosquito problem in Florida… OMG!
So I post the following poll: With regards to a ‘normal’ pregnancy. Do you say “9 Months” or “10 Months”. The answer is not “they are both right”. I want to know which is a more popular counting method for pregnoids. Kinda like the Soda vs. Pop debate. Except I dont think this is a regional thing.
*[sup]I agreed with the “40 weeks” statement because I didn’t want to get into the whole ‘It depends on when you start counting’ argument. A pregnancy is actually 38 weeks from conception but 40 from the LMP. Whatever… the whole point of the poll is "Which is a more popular way to phrase it. 9 Months? Or 10 Months?[/sup]
I think you’ll find it’s almost universally referred to as 9 months, meaning 9 months in the Gregorian calendar (at least, in the U.S.). Anway, that’s how I’ve heard it, thousands of times in my life, compared to zero times for 10 months (until now).
If you count your months as four weeks, it’s 10 months (40 weeks being typical human gestation), but most months contain ~30 days, so it’s 9 calendar months.
When I first went to my OB when I was pregnant with my daughter he explained that nature played a little joke on ladies by disguising a 10 month pregnancy in 9 calendar months. So I heard it from him and later in a couple of my pregnancy books they mentioned the ‘myth’ that pregnancies last nine months.
I’ve never made it to the end, both my kids came kinda early, but let me tell you everything after 32 weeks feels like an eternity!
“The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy” advocates the 10-months thing.
I think the author argues: “40 weeks, 4 weeks to a month, ergo 10 months.” Of course, it’s not just 4 weeks in each month, so she’s not quite right either.
Well, the actual length of time that the baby is growing inside you, in a textbook pregnancy for a woman with a textbook 28 day cycle that ends exactly on the due date, is 38 weeks. Nine and a half months. 40 weeks come in because doctors count the pregnancy as beginning 40 weeks before the due date. For most people, this means you are being counted as pregnant for two weeks before you actually concieve. The reason they do this is that most women don’t have a textbook 28 day cycle. Usually you conceive about two weeks after the first day of your last period-- but not always. Ovulation and therefore conception can occur at any time in the cycle. the first day of the last period is the only time they can be absolutely certain you were NOT pregnant. Everything after that-- can’t tell. Even that’s not always foolproof. I’m 29 weeks pregnant tomorrow, and at the very beginning of this pregnancy I thought I was starting my period. However, since it turned out to be the shortest, lightest period I’d ever had in my life, I got a bit suspicious and took a pregnancy test. Et voila, it was positive.
Another thing is that the due date is by no means precise. Really, there should be a “Due month”. Anything two weeks ahead or two weeks after the due date is considered full term. So pregnancies that last 36 weeks are just as normal as ones that last 40 weeks.
[QUOTE=CairaJade]
Amongst pregnant women and women of childbearing age, it’s almost always referred to in weeks. If months comes it, it is 10 months.QUOTE]
I’ve known a great many pregnant women and women of childbearing age. Hell, I’ve been a woman of childbearing age. And I’ve never heard it referred to as 10 months. So no, it isn’t “almost always referred to” as such.
That it’s 10 4 week months is all fine and good, but only one month in a year has four months. In fact, this is probably the only place I’ve heard people talking about a “4 week month” as any kind of standard other than an approximation for purposes of estimating how long something is.
It’s nine months. If there were four weeks to a month, the year would be 13 months long. It’s not, because your average month is mid-way between 30 and 31 days long.
9 calendar months (in the Gregorian calendar) works out on average to 39.133125 weeks whereas 10 calendar months works out on average to 43.48125 weeks, therefore 9 (calendar) months is a better approximation for a textbook pregnancy.
The whole business of talking about pregnancy in terms of “weeks” instead of “months” seems to be pretty recent. When I was pregnant with my first two kids, who are 16 and 12, respectively, the doctor alway spoke in terms of months and trimesters. During my last pregnancy (my youngest is 4 now), the doctor spoke in terms of weeks. Specifically, how many weeks gestational I was. We knew she would have to be a scheduled c-section, so when I got pretty close to term (36 weeks is considered full term, but 42 weeks is not yet considered “overdue”), he (my OB) pulled out a calendar, pointed to dates, and said, “Well, on Dec. 22nd, you’ll be 37 weeks. Considering how big the baby is, I’d be tempted to take it then, but you’d still be in the hospital for Christmas. So, let’s schedule you for the 29th, when you’ll be 38 weeks, and take it then”. That’s how he talked through the whole pregnancy, as did other health-care professionals (ultrasound techs, labor and delivery nurses, etc.), always in terms of weeks. However, when my MIL said “So how far along are you?” and I said something like “32 weeks” she said, “no, I mean how many months?” So, I think the medical terminology is shifting, therefore the currently or recently pregnant women are shifting their perceptions. But it’s going to take a while for everyone else to switch over.
When I was pregnant a dozen years ago, I learned about the 40 week/ten month thing. Since then, all the pregnoids seem to use those terms. So yeah, I think it’s slowly changing from the traditional 9 months to the arguably more accurate 10.
I asked about this in general questions a month ago… I don’t see how it can be considered “more accurate” since the weeks start before you’re even pregnant. Oh sure, there’s the rare woman who gets pregnant during her period, but for most women they’re not pregnant the first week of the forty weeks because it’s during their period, and they’re not pregnant for the second week, and maybe even part of the third since they haven’t ovulated yet.
Nine months seems a hell of a lot more accurate to me, since that’s about how long you actually have a small person taking up residence in you.
