What is the right length of pregnancy?

sabatka · Newbie Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 14

Hi. About three weeks ago I have found out a terrific news- I'm pregnant. My husband and I, along with our whole families were thrilled when we heard of it.
All this was because we waited so long for this baby and we even started to think that someone of us is sterile. I'm glad everything turned out well.
I was thinking about possible pregnancy length and heard several things about it. Some say that it lasts about 40 weeks, some say 9 months and some say 10 months. Please, could someone tell the right and accurate information about this particular problem?

donlan · Newbie Joined: 12 Jun 2005 Posts: 18

Well, I understand what is confusing you. I could say that all the informations you got were correct but you have misunderstood some of them.
Correct information is that pregnancy really last about nine months but the fact is that you count from your last period, which is two weeks before your conception. And pregnancy really lasts nine and a half months after conception, but we round it off to nine months because it's easier to think about. So 40 weeks is in fact nine months.
There are also some other ways to calculate this- for example- using Nägele’s Rule. It says that the average human pregnancy was 266 days from conception, or 280 days (40 weeks) from the start of the last menstrual period.

What is the right length of pregnancy?

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