When a woman finds out she's pregnant, one of the first things she may start to wonder is what the baby's doing, how far along it is developmentally, and what systems or organs it's developing on any given day. Thankfully, pregnancy calendars available both in the form of books and on the Internet offer expecting moms the opportunity to do just that, as well as to follow along as their baby develops during its nine months in the uterus.
Function
The major purpose of a pregnancy calendar is to help a woman anticipate the changes that will be taking place in her body during the time that she is pregnant. By entering information regarding her menstrual cycle prior to conception, the calendar helps her estimate gestational age. She can then read week-by-week descriptions of her baby's development, as well as the anticipated symptoms she might experience during that same period of time.
Misconceptions
One of the major misconceptions regarding pregnancy calendars, note Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel in their book, "What To Expect When You're Expecting," is that gestational age is calculated from the first day of a woman's last menstrual period rather than from the time of ovulation, or conception. This is because many women track their periods and are able to pinpoint them with more accuracy than ovulation, which many don't feel at all. For this reason, the first two weeks of "pregnancy" on a pregnancy calendar are simply the weeks between the start of the last menstrual period and ovulation, and conception has not yet taken place.
Benefits
There are many good reasons to track development using a pregnancy calendar. For starters, it's good to have some warning before a common and uncomfortable symptom---morning sickness, for instance, or leg cramps---shows up. Second, pregnancy calendars help women plan ahead so that they can have larger bras and maternity clothes ready a few weeks before they start to grow enough to need the bigger sizes. Finally, while all pregnancies are different, certain milestones are worth watching for, including the average gestational age at which a fetus begins to move.
Time Frame
Most pregnancy calendars are organized on a weekly basis. The website What To Expect When You're Expecting (based upon the book by the same name) offers a pregnancy calendar with information for each of the forty weeks of pregnancy, though weeks 1 and 2 (which occur before conception) are bundled together for simplicity. This calendar, like many pregnancy calendars, also marks significant milestones such as the end of trimesters and the end of the embryonic (and beginning of the fetal) stage.
Warning
In her book, "Conception, Pregnancy and Birth," Dr. Miriam Stoppard warns that while pregnancy calendars are helpful in following along with a baby's gestation, they're no substitute for proper obstetric monitoring. It's also worth noting that all pregnancies are different, and while most babies develop at similar paces, there's no reason to panic if development does not appear to take place at exactly the pace predicted by a pregnancy calendar.
References
- "What to Expect When You're Expecting"; Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel; 2008
- What To Expect: Pregnancy Calendar
- "Conception, Pregnancy and Birth"; Miriam Stoppard, M.D.; 2008
