To not know how old my DD is??

[Talcott2007]

I obviously know when she was born but people have counted her 'months' in different ways I don't know which way is correct and it's driving me crazy!

She was born on 31.05.16 (which was a Tuesday if that is at all important)
So that means she will be exactly 17 weeks old tomorrow. If anyone asks how old she is I still say xx weeks because I know the GP and HV still use weeks up until she is a year but all the milestone charts seem to be in 'months' and I'm trying to work out if she is on target with development.

There seems to be 2 ways that people have been working out her age.

1. by the number of weeks (eg. 1 month = 4 weeks) so at 16 weeks that would make her 4months old regardless of the date that day falls on.

2. by the date in the calender month (so every 31st of the month she is a month older) which would mean by that method she isn't 4 months until 30th Sept/1st Oct.

Which method is correct??

I have asked several mum friends in RL but they've each said different things! I am the only one to be baffled by this?? AIBU to feel like a total idiot?!

you can only get away with this:

Weeks up to about 8 weeks old.
Months up to about 12 months old.
Then year, and half years and nearly years.

None of this 23 months nonsense - that would be "nearly 2" 14 months would be "Just turned one" 11 weeks is "3 months"

"Is your DS not hopping / pirouetting / speaking Mandarin / driving yet? Oh. Well. I suppose it takes all sorts to make the world."

TheSparrowhawk I had a few times with DD (only child) where I couldn't be bothered to work out how old she was so just made it up!

001 I object! I'm using months up till 18 months, but other than that I agree with your ruling! Especially on the 23 month thing! I once saw a woman who referred to her kid as her "43 month old"

I would say 4 months.

In my head I would just look at think oh born end of May, so that's June, July, August, September almost gone, so 4 months

If your child is 2 in January, by now if people ask I would say 'almost 2'. Jan-May is ' one or just turned 1', June is '18 months', July and August ' one and half', sept -December 'nearly 2'

Also, I find the weeks thing only really works with medical people or those with own small children. If you tell your childless brother your child is '22 weeks' they wouldn't have a clue how old that was until they work it out

Use whichever you feel is right. Milestones are not set in stone anyway.
From the minute a baby is born they are being measured against bloody charts.

I used weeks up to 12 weeks, then it seemed easier to say months based on the date my baby was born. If the doctor or anyone asked how old the baby was I just gave her date of birth and then let them work it out whichever way they wanted because I lost count of the weeks.

With my first I was all "19 weeks and 4 days".

With my second it was more "I dunno, 4 months or something. I think. Maybe 5. Wait. 6. Nearly 2. Not sure to be honest."

Oh I hate stuff like this - it's so unnecessarily confusing isn't it! It's the same with pregnancy... Five months or 20 weeks? Are you 9 months or 10 months if you are 40 weeks pregnant?

It really doesn't matter, ignore competitive mums - Dd1 walked really early & was verbal early but best mates DS hit the milestones at a later stage but now they are in the same school year, he's in higher groups (point being it means nothing of they walk early!)
DD2 walked early but is talking a bit longer with her verbal skills.
DD2 was about 18months for ages, now she's referred to as almost two as we realised it wasn't long till her birthday (will be 2 in Nov) I could never keep track of weeks/months - she was around 6months for a really long time too!

Weeks are 7 days and their own unit; months are calendar months of varied number of days and their own unit. They're not very interchangeable, because of the variations and the fact that none of them bar February in a non-leap year are exactly divisible by weeks!

So - weeks is more accurate at this stage; when you get past 6 months, stick to calendar months. When you get past 2, you move into years and months anyway. :)

Just be thankful that he wasn't premature, then you get the whole nightmare of the "corrected" age to be quizzed about at all the medical appointments, eg "She's 14 weeks but 8 weeks corrected."

I agree that people (aside from medical professionals) don't really care about the answer, they're just doing it to be polite or to use as a conversational springboard, eg. "Oh he's 4 months? My grandson is five, just started school, it goes so fast..."

I have been saying that DD is "two in December" since the first of January this year.

Also just last week there was a woman in the GP waiting room who asked about DD's age. She went on to say that her own son was 76 (she was 96!). I so wish she'd said 912 months.

When DS1 was small I had a neighbour with two obviously bright little DDs, who still had to be competitive by telling everyone her walking chatty baby girl was one, up until the day before her 2nd birthday when she became 'nearly two'. She was advanced enough for say 20 months, but the proud mama wanted the kudos of having a genius one-year-old too.

Ponk 912 months sounds less, somehow!

I recently filled in a form about drug side effects. Was a multipurpose form and so you could select different units to measure age. Very tempted to work out how many hours old I was...

Talcott competitive parents are deeply annoying.

My DS walked at 10 months. As far as I was concerned it was a nightmare because he was into everything and a runner and I had another baby to contend with at the same time.

A friend at the time's DS didn't walk until 18 months. I never said one word about it. However when he started speaking before either of my children she made an incredibly big deal about it.

"Speech is a far more important milestone than walking" (apparently). I was very restrained and said nothing while grinding my teeth

Of related interest: in the Middle East, people often don't count you as being a particular age until you've 'finished' that year (the language translates very awkwardly but you get what I mean). So when in Britain we would say a child is 2, in Baghdad they would say she was 1, having just completed the year of being 1.

What milestones is she banging on about for a 4 month old, anyway? Rolling? Teeth? Sleeping? Meh. You can't tell anything by any of those things.

what sort of milestones could you be worrying about? whatever it is I promise it really shouldn't be on your mind.

I am not sure if you are genuinely worried about this - but I can't think of a 'milestone' for a 4 month old - surely if your baby is happy and you are happy its al good?

4 month (ish) olds have milestones????

I have a friend who keeps posting on FB about her 35 month old. Honestly, no, nobody cares about that amount of detail.

I think when babies are that age people are staring at their little bundle of joy, everyone's gotten passed the newborn excitement and has left you to it, so you're just willing them to do something already! So then people start banging on about when they look at your face, or hold their head up, or roll over or something.

Honestly OP just because your friend is banging on about it doesn't mean you have to get caught up in it... Just enjoy your little one!

The problem is not the age-counting but the competitive parenting. We should all on MN collect the witty remarks like "found her under a bush", or, slightly sanctimoniously, I won't be pressuring her to (wave her hand or whatever) like one of those performance parents, I believe in children developing naturally ... (mn head tilt)...
I have a friend who is basically lovely but every time I see him with his preschooler, it's "DS, what's this letter? DS? DS? what sound does THIS LETTER MAKE?" (child babbles about something else) "Look, DS? DS? DS? Oh, a HAT? yes, it says HAT!? YOU'RE READING" ...
all very good for his age and all that.. but really. Poor child doesn't care much but I'm thinking by the time he's 10 he'll wish his parents would piss off about whatever calculus they're teaching him

and by the way I am very pro-calculus and pro-reading and all that.
but I am also fine with knowing entirely privately that my children are the best most wonderful clever and brilliant people ever without getting them to perform for my friends... who may in fact not agree. ya know. since I may be a little biased. and once they are 3+, which one said 'mama' first as a baby really doesn't show :)

OP, you don't have an age of baby problem, you definitely have a 'friend' problem. Anyone who tries to imply your child of any age, yet alone this tiny, isn't hitting their milestones is an absolute cow. Unless she's a professor of paediatrics and your child has yet to open her eyelids.

If a hcp asks her age you can ask if they want weeks or months. If 'friend' asks say you've forgotten.

DS was born 16 weeks prematurely, or to be precise, 15 weeks and 4 days. For his first two years we had our regular check-ups at the baby clinic in addition to various appointments with paediatricians and a million other people. It became a standing joke to hand over his red book and then watch the HV get completely baffled as she tried to subtract 15 weeks and 4 days from his actual age. The weeks were easy enough, it seemed to be the additional days that caused utter confusion every time we went there!

Due to his extreme prematurity he was very teeny for a long time. When he was 6 months old and had just grown into 'tiny baby' sized clothes (one size smaller than newborn), I had him in a sling on my front one day and went into Boots. The cashier asked how old he was, and for the first time ever I just couldn't be bothered to recount the whole prematurity story yet again, so I just said six months. She looked at me like I was completely insane, pointed right at him and said "no, THAT baby!" I know he was extremely small, but you'd think I could be relied upon to know how old my own baby was....