QuestionI have a friend who went to medical school for a year and never finished and now thinks she is a full-fledged doctor. She will argue all of the time about how your pregnancy is 10 lunar months. I agree. Have you ever had your O.B. go by lunar months because she will swear up and down that all M.D.s are going by lunar months now and I have a child and we just went by weeks. Is there anything I could say to get her to stop arguing with me? She needs to not give medical advice and quit argueing with me when I follow my doctor's advice, but how do I, and excuse the expression, shut her up?
AnswerHi Jamie,
I hope this will help you!
You have been there, done that... you know that MD's use WEEKS and not months to determine a pregnancy. Between myself and my friend here (we are both surrogate mothers) we have had over 10 pregnancies... all counted by WEEKS.
This is the reason WHY pregnancy is counted by weeks and not just months:
a full term pregnancy is 40 weeks which computes to 10 months. We never get to be 10 months pregnant, thankfully!
The pregnancy cycle starts on the FIRST day of your LAST known period: it does NOT start on conception or ovulation. So, technically, even though during those first two weeks of a womans cycle she is NOT pregnant, those two weeks are considered part of the pregnancy. Say you get a period on March 1. On or about March 14 you would probably ovulate. So somewhere around April 3, 4, 5, etc the period is late, a test is taken, and voila, pregnant. You would be considered 4-5 weeks pregnant already even though conception occurred probably around March 14.
Your friend sounds a bit insecure about her not finishing med school. I think we ALL have someone like that in our lives! You might not be able to shut her up about the lunar months- just know in your mind that you know how the MD's calculate this sort of thing, and find something else to chat with her about.... sometimes you can never win.
Good luck!!!!! :-)
andi
