The 9-month Myth
July 20, 2015
Here’s a thing that irked me. I took high school biology. I took AP Biology. I took even more biology in college. And I learned the following timelines for gestation:
Mice, 20 days
Humans, 9 months
Elephants, 640-645 days
I can do math, too: 9 months x 4 weeks = 36 weeks.
So imagine my surprise when sometime last year, I learned that “carrying to term”, you know, to completion, was actually 40 weeks. That’s 10 months, folks. That’s not 9 months – what are we doing to our youth telling them that a full human pregnancy is only 9, when it’s actually 10??Ā [Ok, my outrage is just on my own behalf.]
Experienced parents may ask, to paraphrase one of my favorite shows, “what’s really the difference between 9 months and 10 months?”
To which I paraphrase-answer: it’s a WHOLE OTHER MONTH!
It makes a difference!
At 35 weeks:
I’d be one week away from being done.
I was remarkably unwieldy but every time I think “nearly there!” someone moves the goal posts. First it’s “LB could come at 36 weeks, no problem!” Then it’s “It’d really be better if LB came no earlier than 37 weeks!” Then, “38 weeks is really better …” This was extra time for me to get even more clumsy, folks, which I didn’t think was possible! (update: more unwieldy? Yes. More clumsy? Actually not possible.)
Under the new system, I had five weeks left.
The WHOLE 5 weeks remain fraught because it could still happen at any minute. I was surrounded by “oh I delivered at 33 weeks. I delivered at 35 weeks. I delivered 4 weeks early and had nothing ready!”
At 38 weeks, I see that we’re still working on some pretty important stuff that maybe should have been taken care of earlier:
“His lungs continue to mature and produce more and more surfactant, a substance that prevents the air sacs in his lungs from sticking to one another once he starts to breathe. Most other changes this week are small but important: He’s continuing to add fat and fine-tuning his brain and nervous system (so he can deal with all the stimulation that awaits him once he makes his entrance into the world).”
Sigh.
We were not concerned about physical-things readiness. LB had a place to sleep, a box of diapers, a stack of clothing and a car seat. Those are pretty much the things you need to bring the newborn home. Also a name would be good. But if LB arrived Week 35, it wouldn’t be a big deal in terms of stuff.
It’s just that for our peace of mind, in the disaster zone of Craigslist-bound stuff and all the donations and crap that our place had become, this stuff needed to begone before LB arrived lest we go right off the deep end.
One, I can’t stand being surrounded by so much stuff. Two, cleaning is going to be the last thing on our minds with a (potentially squalling) infant to tend to, ’round the clock.
I don’t know why we keep saying pregnancy is 9 months but here’s my plea: stop!
Update: I’m laughing at having written this months ago when still pregnant and never re-editing it after. Note to self, mathing is different when your brain is extremely preoccupied with creating a new creature.
Well, a month is slightly longer than 4 weeks (otherwise we’d have 48 weeks a year). Assuming the average month is 30.5 days long, 9 months would be 30.5*9/7 = 39 1/4 weeks. Not quite 40, I’ll grant you, but close.
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This is a thing that’s bothered me about keeping track of age and I completely didn’t account for it here. Hah!
Aren’t you not actually pregnant for two of those weeks (since you get pregnant in the middle of a cycle, and the counting starts at the beginning of a cycle)?
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I thought so? But our doc counted it anyway.
9 months = 39 weeks. Also the obstetricians etc. add an addtional week, because they count the pregnancy from the last day of the woman’s last period. Ovulation takes place on average 7 days after that. So, actually the length of pregnancy for humans is almost exactly 9 months.
So basically we’re saying I cannot math. (My only defense, I wrote this when pregnant and never looked back).
Oh, my. That’s head-spinning.
Now an extra month would REALLY have made a difference back in the day when people mentally counted the months between a couple’s wedding day and the arrival of their first. It was bad enough when women eyed the new mother whose baby was born in December after she married in April. If 10 had been the magic number, a lot more women would have had to put up with the “Hah! I thought so!” stare.
Ah, those were the days. š
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We math pregnancy time weird.
All of this!!
Plus, my midwife doesn’t induce until I am TWO WEEKS over due. So here I sit at 37 weeks and everyone keeps telling me how close I am, how Hops could get here any second, when in reality I could have five whole weeks left!!!
Math is mean to pregnant ladies. š