Simple Ways for Figuring How Many Weeks Am I Pregnant by Lynn Wieczorek
Congratulations, your pregnant! Everyone can see the glow of pregnancy as you walk around town. Everyone who knows you says the same. Now what everyone wants to know is when is your due date. You may be wondering the same thing, “how many weeks am I pregnant“? There are easy ways to figure out how far along in your pregnancy you are. I will explain several ways to calculate your due date.
Just keep in mind there is no exact method that can tell you when your baby will be born, unless you are having a planned appointed medically scheduled delivery. But you can get a very good approximate by using the calculations explained in this article.
First, I will tell you the counting backwards method. This has been a bit confusing to women for many years, although it was created to make counting and calculating your delivery date easy. Use the first date of your last period, add 7 days and then subtract 3 months to get your babies arrival date. This doesn’t pinpoint how many weeks you are pregnant, but it will help you determine when to expect your baby.
Calculate by Your Menstrual Cycle
The method that dates back the farthest is calculating how many weeks pregnant a woman is by her menstrual cycle. Before it became known that women had to ovulate to become pregnant, it was commonly known that babies were born about 40 weeks after the last menstrual cycle. Since most women know when the first day of their last menstrual cycle was, that was the date used to calculate how far along or how many weeks the pregnancy has progressed.
Using this method you would count from the first day of your last menstrual period. (or cycle) Now, get your calendar out and count to the current date via weeks. This is how far along in your pregnancy that you are. If you want to have your baby’s arrival date then you can count the same way. At 40 weeks your baby will be expected to make an appearance.
Now of course, common sense tells us that your not really pregnant before conception, such as this method indicates by counting from the first day of your last cycle. Since this method counts from the first day of your last period, in essence on the day of conception you are already about 2 weeks pregnant. This seems quite silly now that we understand more about how the human reproductive system works. Because of this, a new way of answering the age old question “how many weeks am I pregnant” has been created.
Day of Conception
The other method that is now used counts from the day of ovulation or day of conception. These dates can vary by three or four days. Some women keep track of their ovulations by recording to charts and can tell when they ovulate. Other women are using the date that the doctor gives them from his best estimate taken from ultrasounds or other medical tests. This method uses the actual date of ovulation or conception if known.
Using this method you would count from the date of ovulation or conception being week 0. The following week you are at week 1. If using the first method above you would be 3 weeks pregnant, and not 1 week. The ovulation method makes more sense in the long run but can cause other confusion. When you end the first trimester of pregnancy with this method you are 10 weeks pregnant, not 12 weeks as above. Your due date will not be on week 40, but rather week 38.
Both of these methods have the same break down for trimesters. The reason you should be aware of both methods is if your doctor should tell you that you are 12 weeks pregnant and you don’t know which tracking method he is using. It can be very difficult to tell if you are at the end of the first trimester or if you still have a couple weeks to go. You can miscalculate your due date by a full 2 weeks if you begin using one tracking system to determine “how many weeks am I pregnant”, and then end using the other.
Whichever method you choose to calculate your due date, I wish you a happy and healthy delivery!
About the Author
Find out more about pregnacy and delivering a healthy baby. For mothers-to-be: read important topics such as the truth about stretch marks, how much weight you should gain, what you should have in your birth-plan, and more!