I kid you not. This is how many days Gabe now told me it would be until we have a new baby in our family. Those of you of childbearing age will probably connect with this. I assume those of you outside that demographic might need some dots to be connected…
A “normal” pregnancy is 280 days. You’re considered full term at 259 days, and women are often permitted to go to 294 days without induction. Because of how the medical field counts pregnancy, however, you’re actually pregnant before “sperm-meets-egg.” Pregnancy counting begins on the first day of the menstrual cycle in which you get pregnant. I explained this to my health class students by saying pregnancy dating actually counts the age of the egg – not so much the age of the baby. To simplify matters, the egg really begins developing around the first day of the woman’s period, so that’s how it’s counted. It means by the time a woman gets a positive pregnancy test, she’s about four weeks pregnant.
If I were to get pregnant from this ivf, I’d be considered 20 days pregnant – basically 3 weeks along. So you can knock 20 days off the 280, meaning I’d have 260 to go.
So when Gabe said 268, I sort of did a double take. He had no context for this number. I just said, “When do you think God is going to give us a baby?” And he said, “Two hundred and sixty-eight days.”
After that, he wondered why God wasn’t giving us a baby. “Why,” he asked, “hasn’t God given our family a baby yet?” I told him I didn’t know, that God might give us a baby but He might not. I asked him if he was okay with this, and he said what sounds like music to the ears of the mother of an only child. “Yes. I like that it’s just me alone with you guys.” Of course, knowing the odds are fair that we’ll be adding another child more imminently I wanted to gauge his potential disappointment if I do get pregnant, and he said that would be fine, too, because he’d like to have babies in our family.
So we’ll see. His 17 day prediction was right on. If he’s right on this one, I’ll be 8 days overdue. Which I’m guessing precludes the likelihood of multiples, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a mother of twins or triplets going 8 days overdue!
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