Understanding Para: Definition and Gestational Viability

Question
I am a paramedic instructor in Dayton Ohio.  I was taught in my class that Para meant only live births that the mother had.  I am now being told that para is anything past 28 weeks of gestation whether the mother loses the baby or the baby is born dead, since it is past the 28 week period and the baby is still viable past that point. I have tried to research this topic but have seen different things written. Please clear this up for me, so I can tell my classes the right way to score gravida vs. para. Thank you.

Brandon

Answer
We speak of gravida and parity. Gravid is the number of times a woman was pregnant, whether she deliverd or not, indluding the present pregnancy.  Parity is the number of times a woman has come to term and delivered a baby. We use a four digit system to describe this: 0000.  The fist digit is the number of times the woman came to term. The second digit is the number of premature babies the woman had. The third digit is the number of abortions, miscarriages, or ectopic pregnancies. The fourth digit is the number of living children the woman has now.  Therefore, P1001 is a woman who has given birth once and has one living child.  P1002 is a woman who has given birth once and has two living children (twins).P2001 is a woman who has delivered twice but now only has one living child (it may have died after childbirth or in the war when it was 20 years old). A gravida 2 Para 1 is a woman who is pregnant now and has had one child. It does not matter when the patient delivered or how far pregnant she was when she delivered.