Baby Docs
I am thinking that everyone that knows me very well pretty much knows that I have a certain level of disdain for medical field in general and especially doctors. It generally comes from a higher and more important than you attitude that a lot of doctors seem to take. Most take it one step further and assume that no one, especially the person they are seeing, can truly understand the complexities of what they are actually doing. Reality often is though they are guessing as much as anything based on experiences and what they have seen granted, but without feedback from the patient they would often be totally clueless.
Enter in the whole situation I find myself in now, with a baby on the way. We have been given a range of dates at various times throughout the pregnancy. I don’t recall the exact time that they have given which dates, but the range has been from generally September 30th up through as late as October 8th.
No, I have no issue with a range of dates, as we all understand that the due date is just an estimation and that every pregnancy will be slightly different. Factors include size of the baby and its weight during the progression of the pregnancy and of course things like a womans previous birth experience and even her monthly cycle (everyone is exactly 28 days – NOT).
However, my dismay comes from when I was doing a bit of reading and found out the 280 days is based on the first day of the last monthly cycle. Now in some ways, 280 days says closer to 10 months to me anyway and hence my slightly faulty assumption that it was really slightly longer then nine months. If you are wondering, think a 28 day cycle or four seven-day weeks, which what months should be in my opinion, and you get exactly 10 months. But even divided out by 9 you must have months that have 32 days in them a couple of times and all the rest 31.
Lets go back to that 280 days though. That estimate is from the first day of the last monthly cycle, not the actual date of conception. Do not get your feathers in a big ruffle, but how hard it is to in general know the date of conception? Granted I am just an old farm boy in some ways, but I have known in general with in a day or three of every horse and pig that was bred on my farm what the date of conception was, excepting the occasional sow that did not take on the first time – but even those I knew again with a few days when they re-exposed.
Fact is in this case the whole date they have figured out is just out of line. Granted, there was some confusion with things in regards to the last cycle start, as there was some question of having it occurred. But the date they are giving is actually closer to 280 days from the actual conception date. Reality is that is 266 days from date of conception to a good estimation of birth and in fact when artificially inseminated or otherwise, 266 days is the count used for the estimation.
We know for sure the date of the conception and that makes the estimated date of birth actually September 19th by my own figuring, almost 2 weeks from soonest date given by doctors. Interestingly enough, 266 days is roughly 29.6 days to the month and squarely between 28 and 30 to 31 days.
