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Period of Pregnancy in Human Female—Physiologic Process of Pregnancy—Growth of Embryo from Moment of Conception—Pregnant Woman Provides Nourishment for Two—Her Excreting Organs Must Work for Two.

From the moment the ovum has been fertilized or fecundated by the spermatozoön, the woman is said to be pregnant (or in French enceinte. This term was used very frequently and is still used by prudes, who seem to consider the word pregnant vulgar and disgraceful). Pregnancy, or the period of gestation, lasts from the moment of conception to the moment that the fetus or child is expelled from the uterus. The period of pregnancy differs very widely in different animals,[6] but in the human female it lasts nine calendar months or ten lunar months—from about 274 to 280 days. We usually count 280 days from the first day of the last menstruation. A pregnant woman generally wants to know the day of the expected confinement—for this purpose a table is appended to this chapter. If you know the first day of your last menstruation, you will see at a glance when the confinement may be expected. There may be a difference of a few days—either before or after the expected date—but for practical approximate purposes the tables serve very well.

A simple way is to count back three months and add seven days. For instance, a woman's last menstruation occurred on April 4th; counting back three months gives you January 4th; add seven days and you get January 11th, the probable date of delivery. The first day of the last menstruation was December 30th; counting back three months gives you September 30th; add seven days and you get October 6th, the probable date of delivery. The presence of a short month like February may be disregarded, as the calculation is not absolutely, but only approximately correct.

The period at which the child's movements begin to be felt by the mother is termed Quickening. It usually occurs at the middle of the pregnancy, between the 16th and 18th week.

Pregnancy is a normal physiological process; but every active physiological process is apt to be accompanied by disturbances, and there is certainly no process in the animal body in which greater activity, greater changes, go on than during the process of pregnancy. Just see what occurs in nine months. The uterus, at first the size of a small pear, reaches a size larger than that of the head of a big man; it does not merely stretch, as some think, but it actually grows enormously in size, the muscular walls of a pregnant uterus being many times thicker than those of a non-pregnant one. They have to be or they would not have the strength to expel the child, when the proper time comes. It is to be borne in mind that the child does not slip out by itself; it is the powerful muscular contractions of the uterus that push it out. If the uterus should refuse to work, if its walls were too thin or too weak, the child could not come out, but would have to be taken out with forceps. Still greater changes than in the uterus take place in the child itself. At the moment of conception it is the size of the head of a pin; at the moment of birth it weighs from seven to ten pounds; at the moment of conception it is a minute, undifferentiated mass of protoplasm, just a single fertilized cell; at the moment of birth it consists of millions and millions of cells, which have become differentiated into numerous harmoniously working organs, and different tissues, such as brain and nerve tissue, muscular tissue, connective tissue, bone, cartilage, etc., etc. A truly wonderful process. And in the meantime this child, which is biologically a parasite (though it is not a nice name to call it by) draws its sustenance from the mother's blood, and the mother has to provide nourishment for two. And, besides providing nourishment, her excreting organs, her kidneys, must work for two, because her system has also to get rid of the child's excretions. No wonder that the pregnant woman, particularly under an artificial unhealthy mode of living, is subject to many troubles and disturbances.