Baby Talk.

My newest grandbaby is six days overdue. I dare not get too excited, because his or her big sister overstayed her welcome by seventeen days. Still, all other plans are conditional--yeah, we can go for coffee, Unless The Baby Comes.

This is probably apropos of nothing (hello: I don't get to use that phrase nearly often enough!),  except a headline came across my facebook newsfeed about one of the Duggar girls having a "honeymoon baby" (or WAS it? with eyeroll...).

The site was called Hollywood Gossip, so I can confidently predict the slant the article would take. And my first thought was that the writer probably had no idea, really, of the variables involved in estimating due dates, especially in "honeymoon" babies.

Way back in the day when I was growing up, there was a phenomenon called "seven month babies." Children were routinely born just seven months after a marriage. They were remarkably as large and fully developed as full-term babies. People knew that the couple had "had" to get married, but were polite about it, at least in public. (Oh, to have at least public civility again...) Gossip was left to women in their bridge clubs or over the backyard fence.

My mother got pregnant soon after her wedding, and lost the baby about eight months into her marriage. The baby was stillborn, five and a half months old. She told me, forty years later, how fearful she was that people would talk. There was only her word, after all, of the age of the baby. My daughter-in-law, Ashley, knew she would be ovulating on her honeymoon, and when she went to the doctor, found her due date to be eight months and twenty-six days after the wedding date. But her baby was overdue, and born nine months and four days after the wedding. The stigma of this is gone, of course, unless you claim to have waited till marriage for sex.

So here are a few scientific facts for you. Put them in your arsenal for judgmental friends, or for your own use if you tend toward gossip:

1. Due dates are calculated by the date of your last period. Although the interval between ovulation and the beginning of your next period is always 14 days, the time between Day One of your cycle and Ovulation Day can vary widely. So plotting a date by the "first day of your last period" can be problematic.

2. Sperm can live 3-5 days, and can fertilize an egg even when ovulation happens days after the actual sex. So even if you only had sex one time during the last cycle, you might have gotten pregnant days later. Not a perfect way to estimate a due date, either.

3. Pregnancy is not nine calendar months. It is 40 weeks, or 280 days. Nine 30-day months equal 270; even with 5 or 6 31-day months, you're still not at 280.

4. Babies don't always come right at 280 days. (Okay, you may already know that one.)

So remember: Don't judge. It's none of your business, anyway. A pregnant woman, married or single, young or old, first-time mom or twentieth-time mom, needs your support and congratulations. Period. God can handle the rest.