Well, elfkin, if nine gregorian months is roughly 40 weeks, that’s not really accurate either, now is it? If you’re going to go with actual gestational time for people who didn’t get pregnant during their period, we’d have to shift it to 8.5 months. Or we could just call it nine calender months, or ten lunar months and be done with the thing.
We learned about the calender vs. lunar month count back in sex ed, although I don’t know anyone who referred to their actual pregnancy in terms of 10 months. As other people have pointed out, pregnant women tend to talk in terms of weeks now, unless random nosy strangers ask how far along they are. Then they get the rough month count.
I am not a radiologist, but I work in a radiology clinic, coding XR and US reports. I read OB reports every single day. A full OB ultrasound calculates about half a dozen measurements of the growing fetus and compares it to established standards, lists LMP (last menstrual period), and calculates the projected age from LMP.
The diagnosis code manual that is standardized across the country is how I translate that projected age into a numeric code. This code goes from 765.21 (fewer than 24 weeks) through 765.29 (37 weeks or more), counted from LMP.
I couldn’t explain why they don’t give us codes for 38 weeks, 39 weeks, etc., if 40 weeks is considered standard, but our rads never calculate in months for unborn children.
So pregnancy is 40 weeks or ten months. A calendar year is 52 weeks. We have 12 weeks left over in the year. Since 12 weeks is an additional three months, are you now saying a calendar year is 13 months long?
When I was pregnant, the OB explained to me that a pregnancy was 40 weeks, at which point I said, “HEY! You guys have been trying to pull the wool over our eyes with this nine months thing! 40 weeks is ten months!” He took my objection seriously and explained that a month was not actually four weeks long, it AVERAGED 4.3 weeks and therefore nine months was close enough. I was kidding, but in truth I’d never really thought about it prior to that.
I had never heard of the 10 months thing until I was actually pregnant. And then I only heard of it from the kinds of sources that try and make every little thing regarding pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting A REALLY BIG DEAL. Y’know–the ones that recommend that you ought to go into the delivery room with music, candles, a “focal point,” aromatherapy, your own bed linens, a shaman, your mother, your best friends from elementary school, high school, and college, and a partridge in a pear tree.
In other words, nobody that I found credible ever referred to a pregnancy as 10 months. And pregnancies are always popularly referred to as nine months. People will say things like “Little Susie was born nine months to the day after our wedding!” I don’t think that they’re trying to say “Little Susie was conceived out of wedlock!” Besides, a month is not 4 weeks. It’s just not. No matter how you try to rationalize it, a month is longer than 4 weeks. Unless it’s February, of course. If you can arrange it so that you are pregnant in February only for a whole decade, then I guess you can claim the 10 months. Otherwise, you’re just an imbecile.
My doctor did refer to my pregnancy in weeks, and I consequently did, too. I wonder if the switch to measuring in weeks instead of months has something to do with the advances in pre-natal monitoring technology, and the related advancements in the understanding of fetal development. There is no sense in “rounding up” to months when you can get sufficiently accurate measurements in weeks. An example: They wanted to take certain blood tests at particular week points. I had to take one a week late once, and they adjusted the parameters for evaluation accordingly. The levels of whatever it was would have been a little high if I had taken the test at 16 weeks, but since I was at 17 weeks, the levels were normal. (Or something like that)
I assumed she meant that with a wink–like “hey ladies, let’s milk this thing for all we can!” After all, she’s the one claims she shaved her legs and put on heels to see the obstetrician… In other words, I thought she was just being funny.
I don’t understand how any of you can say that 10 months is ‘more accurate’ than 9 months. Math people. Average Month = 30.42 days. 40 weeks = 280 days. Therefore, 40 weeks = 9.21 months. Didn’t anyone tell you the rounding rules? <.5 rounds down, .5=> round up? Since this isn’t anywhere close to 9.5 months (heck, it’s further from 9.5 than it is from 9.), it’s 9 months for an approximation. Counting by lunar months is just silly. If you were 8 months pregnant and told someone you were nearly 9 months pregnant, but weren’t due for another 5 weeks, you’d freak them out.
Why is measuring pregnancy in lunar months any sillier than creating an artificial situation where women’s cycles occur every lunar month? I know no one who has a 28 day cycle when not on the pill and yet that is the basis for women’s cycles at OB/GYN practices. Since doctors and some patients are used to this lunar month count for one why should it seem odd they use it for the other?
I don’t care what the OB-gyn says, my wife was not pregnant DURING her last period. That is just silly. And she wasn’t pregnant the week BEFORE we conceived either. According to their schedule, at the time of conception, you are in your third week of pregnancy. Huh?? Yeah, that’s what I said. So they are calculating 40 weeks from the first day of my wife’s last period to figure out the due date. OK that’s fine and dandy, I’ll play along with their little scheme (kidding) but when my wife reaches that date, she will have had a little person inside her for 38 weeks, which equals 8.744 months. I rounded up to get a nicer number, so for practical purposes, it’s 8 months and 3 weeks.
Saying 10 months is clearly lunacy. (don’t miss the pun)
I am pregnant for the first time and my Dr. refers to everything in weeks, probably because it is more precise. I say 9 months, though, unless I am talking to my Dr. or husband about it. If a random person would ask me how far along I am I would say 3 months, but to my Dr. I would say 15 weeks. Among friends and co-workers who have young children or who are pregnant though, it is common to hear about length in weeks, not months. When it is referred to in months, it is only 9 months I have heard though, not ten (except for the books already referred to in this thread).
I would say about 3/4 of the material I read refers to everything in weeks. I think it is becoming more and more common to hear it divided up this way. Along the same lines I commonly hear people use months, not years to say how old their baby is (they would say 14 months, not 1 for example) until well over 2 years old.
Chinese refer to a Pregnancy of 10 Month, were Europeans refer to it as 9 Month
now as the Chinese Calendar is Thousands of Years older as the European Gregorian one, we should give the Chinese Version at least a thought and acknowledge their interpretation as the Farmers do. The Farming Calendar in the Northern Hemisphere derives from the Chinese Calendar for instance …
BTW: those who had the Luck of living or visiting China, find there both Calendars in use, why can’t we follow their Example and use both Calendars……
You should call the Dept of Child Services now. This woman is not rational, her circle of friends are deluded and/or misinformed, her doctor got his degree in commune, and no good can come of her raising a child.
Yeah, yeah, old thread. Anyway. . .
In the early 1970s, I remember reading a newspaper account of a chap named “10-8 Kelly.” Said that was his actual name, that his parents gave him that odd name because his gestation period was “ten months and eight days.” I wish I could go thru newpapers sometime and look for it.
In the Chinese Lunar calendar a month is still 30 days long, so 40 weeks would be 9 1/3 months. Do they really refer to pregnancies as 10 months? If so, then they are being inaccurate by their own reckoning.
I would guess that most people’s lives aren’t affected much by the phase of the moon, so following two separate calendars doesn’t make much sense. In Buddhist cultures, it’s more important since people often fast or become vegetarians during the full moon and/or new moon, holidays usually follow a moon phase, and other occasions, like death anniversaries, follow the lunar date. Even there it can be confusing, since if you say you’re going to do something on “the fifth”, especially around the new year (i.e., now), it can be ambiguous what you mean. When the solar and lunar months are just a day or two off, that gets really confusing.
52 weeks is 364 days. Answers quoted to three or four decimal places will be affected by that.