"How many months have you?" - a question asked by impatient relatives and friends often baffles the expectant mother. After all, the term in the antenatal clinic is usually set in obstetric weeks. Or maybe it will be more convenient for you to observe the process of the baby's development, counting for months, as our mothers and grandmothers did.
Instructions
Step 1
First you need to figure out which starting point means the beginning of pregnancy. Conception usually occurs in the middle of the cycle, 14-16 days after the onset of menstruation. You can find out about the delay in 2-3 weeks, and logically, this period should correspond to two or three weeks of pregnancy, or half of the first month. And the expectant mother, who comes to the antenatal clinic with a week delay, is often dumbfounded by the period that the gynecologist tells her: 5 weeks.
Step 2
The fact is that doctors in antenatal clinics and maternity hospitals are more comfortable with a different scheme. It is not known when the egg came out of your ovary and conception occurred. In some women, fertilization may not occur on the 14th day, but in the first days after menstruation or on the 17-20th day of the cycle. Not every woman can name the number on which unprotected intercourse occurred.
Step 3
Therefore, gynecologists all over the world consider the beginning of pregnancy from the first day of the last menstruation. Thus, pregnancy lasts 280 days, or 40 weeks.
Step 4
As for calculating pregnancy by months, because of the addition of 2 extra weeks to the obstetric period, it turns out that the first "month" of pregnancy is the most mysterious, because it consists of 6 weeks! Further months remain the usual calendar: 7-11 weeks - the 2nd month, 12-15 weeks - the third month, 16-19 weeks - the fourth month, 20-24 weeks - the fifth month, 25-28 weeks - the sixth month, 28- 31 weeks - the seventh month, 32-35 weeks - the eighth month, 36-40 weeks - the ninth month.
Step 5
And yet it is more correct to count the gestational age in obstetric weeks - and there is less confusion, and it will be more convenient to monitor the growth of the baby. Indeed, in magazines for moms, medical sources and exchange cards, the world-accepted calculation scheme has been used for a long time.
