There are a lot of weird things about having a pregnant wife. I’m sure anything I find weird pales in comparison to what Jen is experiencing, but there are two things that absolutely baffle me:
#1. The strange obsession with rating a fetus to the size of a food
A food? I acknowledge that food size is almost universally understood as a convenient unit of measure. But you know what’s also universally recognized and way more precise? The International System of Units. How big is a papaya? What a strangely uncommon fruit choice to use as a measurement comparison. And what about variations in vegetable size? A potato? Potatoes can vary in size considerably. NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT WE EAT FOOD. How big is your unborn child? Oh, about the same size as the apple that you’re chewing on right now. That weirds me out. I’d prefer centimeters and kilograms thankyouverymuch.
#2. 40 weeks isn’t 40 weeks. It’s 38. Stop lying to us OBGYNs across America.
This one bothers me more than it should. According to general practices the age of a fetus is calculated from the end of the menstrual period prior to conception. Typically, conception takes place two weeks into a cycle. That means that at the moment of conception, it (zygote, morula, baby, whatever you want to call it) is ~two weeks old. This is stupid. In a way, one could argue that if you’re a woman within the first two weeks of your cycle you are pregnant. Some websites actually describe the first two weeks as “Pregnant, but not.”
“But wait!” I thought, “Maybe this is just a better safe than sorry method to keep track until the OBGYN can more accurately gauge the age of fetus. It’s gotta be hard to determine exact conception dates, but humanity has developed amazing technologies that do a great job of determining size and progress of an unborn kid! That’s gotta be it. I’m sure it will be updated after the first ultrasound.”
nope.
The age in weeks is never corrected. This gross approximation is carried all the way to the delivery room.
Sigh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1AkdWkDx8k&t=9m4s
There are also all the crazy women on the pregnancy boards (baby center.com and the like) that refuse to acknowledge actual math. Lots of whining about how pregnancy is TEN MONTHS LONG, because you know a month is only four weeks, and I just can’t with the bad math. And continual “how long is a trimester questions” so easy to figure that one out on your own, such easy math and yet so beyond most people apparently. There are so many silly pregnancy things to be annoyed at, so many, and don’t get me started on due dates and how most people don’t understand them.
Yo! It’s because there are actual pregnancy prep things goin on in those two weeks. Think of it like this: the body is baby ready for 40 weeks; baby shows up at week 2. It’s like you’re a hotel that is open for business but no one checks in for two weeks.