THE WORLD OF PREGNANCY MATH

Most people LOVE a pregnant woman. Most people will ooh and ahh over the ever growing belly. Some will even lunge at it with both hands and rub and hug and kiss and talk to it. It's unavoidable. And EVERYONE will ask -- "How far along you?" It's such a great question. I wish I knew the correct answer. Most people want to know how far along you are in layman's terms. Most people don't get what the heck 23 weeks means. You can see the wheels turning in their brains as they try to figure out how many months that equals. People want to know months. And as any pregnant woman can attest to -- every website, every book, and every person will have a different answer. I have been trying to get my brain around this concept since I was pregnant with Miles. Here's what I have sort of concluded. A full-term pregnancy is roughly 40 weeks. About 10 months. A pregnancy is usually calculated from the first day of the last menstrual cycle. So you are already 4 weeks "pregnant" by the time you miss your period. Yeah yeah we all get that part. So -- I bump a week every Sunday and I bump a month every 20th day of the month. Counting from the date of my LMP I am 5 months and 5 days pregnant. If that is true then that would mean that I would have about 5 months left to go. Nope. If you count from October 20 to February 20 that's 4 months. You obviously don't need me to tell you that only equals 9 months. So what the heck gives? Am I 5 months along out of a 9 month pregnancy or am I 6 months along out of 10? I made my final decision on this. I know that not every month has the same number weeks. Some have more than 4 and yada yada yada. But I have decided to just take the average -- 4 weeks per month -- and go with that. Every 4 weeks I bump up a month. So for those of you who have been asking -- I will be 24 weeks along next Sunday and will therefore be 6 months pregnant!!! Now does any of this mean that sweet little Lennon will be making an appearance on time. Absolutely not. If he's anything like his big brother he'll show up very fashionably late.