How long does pregnancy last? How is a pregnancy 9 months long? When will my baby born?
On the 9th day of Christmas Calm Mama gave to me…. 9 months of pregnancy!
Oh due dates, how we love and hate them. The excitement of a pending date as it draws nearer and nearer, quickly followed by the stress and dread as that date draws very near and you maybe even pass it! That’s not fair, you were told you were going to have a baby on a particular date! Sorry, babies don’t run to schedule (and they kind of never do after they are born either, I think it is just the first step of practicing patience as a parent ??)
You get your first tentative date when you get that positive test and type the dates of your last period into a calculator and you get your due date. The date goes into your diary with a little love heart and that’s it you go into countdown mode to that date. Then that date will probably change at least once, maybe even twice when you start having scans and the date moves by a couple of days because estimating ovulation but date of period is a wobbly science. (And even then due dates make no sense, once you are pregnant you were magically two weeks before you ovulated and at least 3 weeks before that egg fertilised and implanted and you biologically became pregnant but that’s another story). But your new due date goes into the diary and your countdown adjusts and you carry on counting down to that all import due date. Only problem is, did any one tell your baby the date they are due to make their appearance? Did anyone tell your uterus? I’m afraid not and it turns out that the ‘9 months’ of pregnancy is a myth, it doesn’t even add up to 40 weeks and even if it did, only 5% of pregnancies end with a baby being born on its due date! The majority of pregnancies go past that due date, with the average first time pregnancy lasting 41 weeks and 3 days. So my advice to you is, throw your due date in the fuck it bucket, tell people what month you are due if they really want to know or if you are really feeling gutsy tell them a date a full two weeks later than you due date so the questions of ‘any sign of baby’ doesn’t start until baby is already here! It will really help you relax in those final few weeks of pregnancy!
And my second piece of due date advice is that I recommend starting your hypnobirthing classes around the 28-30 week mark so get in touch to get booked into a course starting in the first few weeks of your third trimester soon! Spaces are filling up!
