Vocaboly.com

[Skitt]

doyle60@aol.com wrote:

[timtak]

Interesting...Here the misconception is deemed to be that of the Japanese ladies.

I admit that there is a misconception going on in Japan - that some Japanese ladies are thinking that pregnancy is 10 calendar months.

But at the same time, it seems to me that there is a bit of a misconception going on in the West too. Or at least Westerners are not aware of the arbitary, and somewhat unnatural nature of the time period that they are applying.

I think that Japanese are not using "lunar" months, but using menstral cycles. 10 is the number of menstral cycles that it takes to gestate a human. Such cycles are thought of as being "monthly" and to measure the length of time that women take to gestate a baby in women's months is a very natural thing to do. (While It is incorrect to assume that this corresponds to calendar months. )

In the West however, the period of time is measured from the time of conception. In menstral cycles this is 9.5 cycles and using conception as the start of the life of the foetus, it would be again based in nature to think of the length of pregnancy as 9.5 menstraul/womens'/lunar months. However, 9.5 months just happens to coincide with the length of 9 Gregorian calendar months. This coincidence is quite fortuitious and entails the again cultural/fortuitious assumption that conception signals the start of the process.

I also hear (this is unconfirmed) that in order to avoid the problems that arise from the fact that calendar months are a different lengths, and because it is often difficult to acertain when ovulation/conception occured, Western prenatal clinics also use the last normal period as the beginning of pregnancy, and four-week-months, but in order to conform to the conception that there are 9-months of pregnancy, count the first and last month as being six weeks long.

I (a Westerner) was unaware of arbitary nature of my conception of the length of pregnancy and that was a misconception on my part too.

[janahaze1365]

Ok, can someone please help me figure out this? I took a pregnancy test on Monday it was showing that it was positive. However today I'm getting some blood spots. I schedule a doctor but not until 2wks so they can confirm. I read that there is always some spotting after you get pregnant, but for how long? Right know I have a very bad cold, therefore I'm very sleepy, tired and lost my appetite. Can someone please help me?

[timtak]

If you are worried you need a medical opinion as soon as you can. I am in no way connected with medicine so I really can't say. I could say a lot of stuff but it would only be misinformed hearsay.

[slobone]

[timtak]

I heard that Oriental(s) is okay in the UK, but in the US it tends to refer to rugs and cuisine.