To Settle a Debate.

[SysRq]

Could someone tell me how long a normal full term pregnancy is? I say 36 weeks and my mother says 42 and we have been looking on the web for about an hour to find out and havent found it so if somone could tell us and settle this it would be great.

[crystaldragon]

Maybe this link will help pregnancy

I looks like there is a chance that you may both be close.

[SysRq]

lol tyvm crystal

Another one, also indicating something in the middle .... When will my baby be born?

There is no fixed length. Varies from individual to individual and also varies with environmental factors.

The way one measures the length, i.e. definition of start point and end point also determine the length, obviously.

I think it is always referred to as a range of time rather than an exact number of days so both you and your mom are correct.

[SysRq]

so how do they get the like genral idea of a due date?

[alligator_al]

I have to admit I didn't know either. It's usually rounded to 9 months (of 30 days?) and sometimes given as 265 days, but to get some idea of the disagreement over the 'average' period, try a google search for "human gestation period +is"!

[no1_vern]

Its an average - while some women will take as little as 255 days(on the low end of the bell curve) for a normal birth, some pregnancies last 280 days(on the high end of the bell curve)again, for a normal birth.
In short : what shahani said .

As you can see the answer is " it depends".

[NeoStarO1]

Well th way the doc explained it to me, was this, I asked if its really 9 months cuz the weeks don't add up right, he said, actually its closer to 10 months, cuz when the baby is due a woman is going into her 10th month of pregancy.

as someone else says, it varys from woman to woman.

[sharder8]

All I know is my oldest daughter was due on April 1st, but didn't arrive until May 19th. My wife spent the last 4 weeks going back and forth to the hospital for monitoring of the baby. (That was 10 1/2 months between when they estimated conception and birth.)

My second daughter was due in late June and arrived July 17th. My son was due the middle of May and showwed up May 24th.

That was it, my wife said NO MORE!

Harder