Monday, March 28, 2011

News flash: Pregnancy is TEN months

I'm starting to notice there are a lot of repeat conversations during pregnancy, especially when it becomes apparent that there's something at least the size of a volleyball in your belly.

Everywhere I go, a barrage of three questions ensues:

How far along are you? Is it a boy or a girl? Do you have a name picked out?

But something odd tends to happen when I tell people how far along I am: they automatically tell me how much time I have left. And without exception, they are a full month short.  It happened just this morning in the elevator:

"How far along are you?"

"Eight months."

"How exciting! Just one month left!"

Multiply that conversation times 100. At the gas station, the mall, restaurants, movie theaters...you name it.

News flash, people: Pregnancy is 10 months, not nine.

It's just strange to me that, despite that fact that millions of babies are born each year in the U.S. alone, people are still confused about how long it takes for them to get here. That's a lot of pregnancies - lots of mommies, daddies, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles and of course, babies.

Even my husband the other day was trying to tell me I'm not as far along as I think I am because he was counting backward from my due date. That was a comical conversation.

"Honey, you can't be right," he tells me. "The movie is called Nine Months, not Ten Months."

How can you argue with that?

Perhaps I should have invested in one of those expecting-Daddy books after all.

Rachel Raya is a Public Relations Manager for Texas Health Resources who is expecting her first child, a daughter, in two months.

1 comment:

  1. Congratulations on your first baby. Technically, no one can be correct on how long a pregnancy is since it could be anywhere from between 37 to 42 weeks. I was a 10 month baby (42 weeeks) and my wife was a 9 month baby (37 week). We just had a baby and she was 40 weeks. The important thing is good health and happiness which I hope and wish for you and your family. Cheers! :)

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