How far along are you?

(Warning: this post will be really boring to you if you don't have baby brain)

How far along are you? It's a question I get asked all the time. It seems like it would be such an easy question to answer, but it's not! Ask any pregnant woman and she will know precisely how far along she is, down to the day (maybe even down to the hour, if you're like me). Pregnant women, and their doctors, date pregnancies in terms of weeks and days. For example, today I am 25 weeks and 3 days along. But if someone not familiar with pregnancy asks me, and I tell them that I'm 25 weeks, they'll immediately ask me "well how many months is that?"

Now, I have to back up a second and state that my due date is up for debate. If you go by my last period, as doctors usually do, my due date would be somewhere around December 9th. But since we were trying to conceive and I know exactly when it happened, I knew that date would be about a week off based on a screwy cycle. At our very first ultrasound at 6 weeks and 3 days along, I was told that my due date was December 20. However, for some reason the tech wrote down that my due date was December 21, so that's what my doctor has listed as my current due date. However, at every single ultrasound I've had since then (the grand total so far is 8, with plenty more to go) the baby has measured to be closely on target with the estimated due date based on conception, putting him due sometime between December 16 and 18. But the doctor hasn't changed my official due date yet. I'm going with December 16 since I fully intend to have this baby by then.

Then, depending on which pregnancy book you read, you never really know how many months along you are. To greatly complicate matters, there's the whole 10 month pregnancy concept that so many people (often men, I've noticed) do not understand. I didn't get it myself until I got the "Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy" book, which explained it for me. The Mayo Clinic book subscribes to the 10 month pregnancy idea, so according to them I just started my 7th month of pregnancy (weeks 25 to 28). However, according to one of my other pregnancy books (I have like 8 of them), "What to Expect When You're Expecting," I'm still in my 6th month, and will be for another week and a half (weeks 23 to 27).

I'm sorry if that was really boring and/or confusing. It's just something I think about at least daily when I get asked how far along I am. And since this is my blog, I get to write about whatever I feel like!

On another note, Jamie and I will be spending our day tomorrow at the hospital in an "Infant Care" workshop. Having babysat all through high school and college, I'm pretty familiar with the basics of how to care for a baby. But I've never been the primary caregiver for anything other than a certain yellow labrador, so I figured it may be a good idea to take a refresher course. Apparently we're going to learn all about bathing, feeding, when to call the doctor, how to administer medicine, etc. Jamie just asked me, quite enthusiastically, if he was going to learn how to change a diaper tomorrow. It's so wonderful to have a husband who's just as excited about having this baby as I am :)