Pregnancy Math for Dummies....or is it BY dummies?

As of today, I am 27 weeks pregnant. To the layperson, 27 weeks means 6 months, 3 weeks. Well, not according to pregnancy math....according to pregnancy math, I am in the final week of my 7th month. Next week, when I hit the 28 week milestone, I will be in my 8th month. I know what you are thinking! "But 28 divided by 4 is 7!" Yes, I know, but I defy you to argue with my uterus.

Let us begin at, well, the beginning. For starters, pregnancy is widely-thought to be a nine month experience. THIS IS WRONG! The standard pregnancy is 40 weeks, which is a total of 10 months. If you are confused, it is only because you are pregnant before you are pregnant. Well....not exactly. It's just that by the time you figure out you are pregnant, you have missed your period. They count from the first day of the last period you had, eventhough the egg was fertilized roughly two weeks later. So, eventhough conception had not occured until about 2 weeks before you MISS your period, you are already considered 4 weeks pregnant. Just when you thought you were TOTALLY confused, it gets worse!

Once you know you are pregnant, your first ultrasound will be used to determine your due date. Now, the doctors seem to take this as gospel, this very first ultrasound. Even if it differs from when you know you conceived (and when you are trying to conceive as long as we were and charting, documenting, counting and approaching it very scientifically, you KNOW when you conceived!) In my case, for some reason, my pregnancies get off to a very slow start. The embryos are smaller than they should be, the blood counts lower than they should be. Due to those factors, I am given one due date, but am actually due earlier. At the end of May, the medical staff was calling the ultrasound they were doing my 18 week scan. I told them it ws my 20 week scan. Convinced I was wrong, the sonographer and doctor checked every single measurement of the baby and guess what? He measured 19 weeks, 6 days....in other words, 20 weeks. He was, as Scott called him that day, "Officially half-baked"! Are you totally confused yet?

All of this brings me to trimesters. The definition of trimesters varies from one source to another. Logically, a 40 week pregnancy, when divided by 3 trimesters, means that each trimester is 13 weeks, 2 days long. Most sources concur that trimester 1 is weeks 0-12, the second trimester is weeks 13-26 and the third trimester is weeks 27-40. Some sources differ, but for now I will savor the thought that today began my third trimester. The sacred, uncomfortable, miserable rollercoaster toward the delivery of this amazing little creature within me. In all likelihood, he won't be "allowed" to remain in the womb for the full 40 weeks. Due to my high-risk status, I will probably deliver him about 3 weeks early like I did with Brodie.

Hmmmm....does that change the math? Dear God, I hope not. I've finally got it all figured out!!!!! Now, if I could just figure out how to get this abacus, calculator and protractor back into the womb!