What is the gestational age of pregnancy

How long are you? or when do you come out of accounts? These are the questions most often heard by a woman when she says she is pregnant. To answer these questions it is necessary to know the gestational age of pregnancy or what is the same, the time that elapses from the first day of the last menst

How long are you? or when do you come out of accounts? These are the questions most often heard by a woman when she says she is pregnant. To answer these questions it is necessary to know the gestational age of pregnancy or what is the same, the time that elapses from the first day of the last menstruation (FUR) until the determined moment of pregnancy.

On average, the gestational age of a pregnancy with a single fetus lasts for an average of 280 days or 40 weeks from the date of the last period. This allows us to know the estimated date of delivery (FPP).

How the pregnancy gestational age is calculated

The gestational age is calculated in weeks and there are several rules to determine the gestation time or the probable date of delivery. The best known are three:

1. Naegele's Rule: Consists of adding 7 days to the first day of the last menstruation and subtracting three months.

2. Wahl's Rule: hay On the first day of the last menstruation, add ten and then go back three months. 3.

Pinard's Rule: At the end of the last menstruation, add ten days and go back three months. If the date of the last menstruation is unknown or the rules are usually not regular, another way of knowing the gestational age of pregnancy is

through some measures of the baby that are taken by ultrasounds such as: the length of the skull caudal, the biparietal diameter, the cranial perimeter, the length of the femur or the abdominal perimeter. What is the use of knowing the gestational age of pregnancy?

The gestational age

allows us to know how the pregnancy develops and to determine if the parameters analyzed in the baby correspond to the normal ones for that stage of pregnancy. A normal pregnancy can range from 38 to 42 weeks. Babies born before week 37 are considered premature and after week 42 they are considered post-mature.

Gestational age is useful for gynecologists and obstetricians to determine, for example, whether it is feasible to carry out a delivery before certain problems during pregnancy or to indicate to what day they can wait at the most (after 40 weeks of gestation) before Make the decision to provoke childbirth.

Cristina González Hernando.

Editor of Guiainfantil.com