At 09:18 PM 04/01/1999 -0500, you wrote: >Hello out there in DUTTON cyberland! > >I have great news. Naw, not about Odard! Drat! [snip] >Thomas' >son, John, was born 9 months, 10 days after his marriage. Is this a >shotgun wedding, a premature birth, or a successful wedding night?!!??? [snip] Hi, Dutton cousins and all: The "9 month" calculation is a misunderstanding by most people (not doctors). In fact, it is a way of calculating forward to the due date of an expected child, not a way of calculating backward to the conception date of one which has already arrived. One counts 9 months forward from the last menses (period) to estimate the delivery date. However, conception occurs about the time of ovulation, which is much more difficult to observe, about 2 weeks later. I believe the average human gestation period (conception to delivery) is 260 days, or 37 weeks plus, or almost exactly 8-1/2 months. Based on the 9-month method, a "honeymoon baby" would almost always appear to be premature (whichever way you define it). Thomas' son John was likely conceived nearly a month after the wedding. The reason that this sort of thing is not seen more is, first, the simple probabilities, as intercourse at ovulation results in conception a lot less than half the time. Also, it seems that becoming sexually active is a bit of an adjustment for most healthy adult female reproductive systems. The likelihood of conception increases over about the first year. Interestingly enough, it doesn't depend very much on the age of the woman (after about 17 years old and before 30). I'm not sure that Thomas and his wife would be all that happy about us modern Americans' contradictory habits of discussing all things sexual, while at the same time regarding the subject as still somehow excitingly taboo. I find it fascinating, as I have a large body of data from the 17th and 18th Centuries. Certain patterns emerge, allowing one (for example) to hypothesize a missing child, or a miscarriage, or that a woman died of complications of pregnancy or childbirth, when there is no direct evidence. One could safely conclude, for example, that given the lack of relatively effective contraceptives during the period, a very high percentage of 17th Century Massachusetts brides came to the wedding bed as virgins. One can also point to examples of the contrary, of course. For what it's worth. Darrell Darrell A. Martin formerly of the Dutton District, Springfield, Vermont currently in exile in Addison, Illinois darrellm@sprynet.com