The last time I touched a math book was my freshman year of college. I took my one required semester and then moved on to enjoy some liberal arts. I'm not ashamed to admit that in the years since 1996 (gulp!), I have lost nearly all math ability I may once have had. I'm one of those people who starts sweating and shaking when I have to make change or calculate the correct tip. My career doesn't really require me to do math, and I was smart enough to marry a math genius who gratefully does any necessary calculations for me.
So it's no surprise that my (current) worst fear about having a baby is that it's forcing me back into math. Recently, a colleague asked me, "How far along are you?" I replied 18 weeks. She asked, "So how many months is that?" (Cue sweating and shaking.) I threw out some random number and then went back to my desk to immediately google "pregnancy calculator" to discover that I was 5 months pregnant.
My doctor and all my baby books document the pregnancy by weeks, not months! And I know that pregnancy is really 10 months, when all is said and done, which makes me sweat and shake for multiple reasons. And you start counting your pregnancy from 2 weeks before conception, which means I was already two weeks pregnant before I was pregnant. You see why I'm fearful and confused?!
I'm sure that I'm going to have to do a lot more calcuations even after this baby is born. Isn't there some rule that we have to refer to our child's age in months until he/she reaches puberty, but I'm always going to want to translate that into years. And I think bottles and formula come in ounces, so I'm probably going to have to learn how to half and double those measurements. There are probably tons more math problems related to baby and child that I cannot even fathom...yet another mystery of pregnancy that noone tells you about.