Skip to main content

IN DEFENCE OF A LEAP YEAR: TRIBUTE TO MY FRIEND



Ok, seriously, this isn’t my call (mathematico-logics, I mean). My call is medicine. But then, my curiosity has been fueled by the peculiar date of birth of my friend. He was born on the 29th of February, 1988, and so i'd try.
Permit me to state the Naegele’s rule which is the standard way of calculating the due date for a pregnancy. The rule estimates the expected date of delivery(EDD) from the first day of the last menstrual period by adding one year, subtracting three months (or adding nine months), and adding seven days to the first day of a woman’s last menstrual period(LMP).
Example:
I am presenting a 26 year old Turkish woman, who is a banker whose last menstrual period (LMP) begun on the 16th March, 2013(16/03/2013). What is her expected delivery date (EDD)?
LMP=16/03/2013
         +1 year= 16/03/2014
          -3 months/+9 months= 16/12/2014
           +7 days= 23/12/2014
Therefore, the EDD is 23rd of December, 2014
I would like to reverse the process a bit so as to arrive at the LMP, since the EDD is given (assuming EDD was 40 weeks/280 days from LMP)
EDD= 29/02/1988
LMP=?
-1 year= 29/02/1987
+3 months= 29/05/1987
-7 days= 22/05/1987
LMP= 22/05/1987
Anyways, now that the LMP has been ascertained (provided the date of delivery wasn’t beyond/before the EDD), we ought to discuss the leap year, oughtn’t we? Why is there a leap year?
A leap year is a year in which a leap day is added to the calendar, so as to synchronize it with the seasons.
Why do we need leap years? Leap years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun. This is because the earth takes about 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds to circle once around the sun. if the 29th day wasn’t added to February on the Gregorian calendar (the standard calendar for civil use), after a century, our calendar would be off by about 24 days. Does that look small? Ok, how about this: we would have lost about 6 hours off our calendar every year!
The implications are that without a leap year, we would all have unstable birthdays and there would be asynchrony of the calendar.
A leap year is evenly divisible by 4, 100, and 400. It was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. but has since been modified.
Really, without the leap year, life on earth wouldn’t be as organized as it is now.
To the friend who made this blog post possible #Oladele Femi#…and who indeed made blogging a reality for me.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Your EDD, if right, states that you weren’t conceived in a leap year, but and that without your date, the earth would be asynchronized. You are indeed special.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LABOURING: IN THE PROCESS OF DREAM BIRTHING (2)

Labour/ birthing of dreams has three main phases, to view the 1st Stage and what it is correlated with, please check LABOURING: IN THE PROCESS OF DREAM BIRTHING . Thank you. STAGE 2: This is the stage of labour that begins from the full dilatation of the cervical os (10cm) till the baby is delivered. It is extrapolated with diligently seeking your dream and getting it.  These are called the (iv) Seeking stage (v) Getting stage     Phase 1 (SEEKING STAGE): It begins from the full dilatation of the cervical os till the leading part of the fetus is on the pelvic floor. It is often marked by an irresistible urge of the mother to push and in regards to the birthing of a dream; the tenacity of the dreamer concerning the dream. (S)He keeps pushing till it is realized. IT IS THE "I SOUGHT IT STAGE". When normal, this phase is characterized by: ·          Strong contractions ·        ...
Post a Comment
Read more

WANNABE INTERN

Week 2 Message to the Pre-Intern: don’t lose hope! Week 2, for me, was 2 months post-induction. This was when the wait began to sink in. You mean I’ve been home for two whole months? By now, I was literally chewing on my fingernails. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t scared of getting a space, but I certainly wasn’t confident about any place anymore. That is when I began to write this book. Today is the 12th of September and I sit at the dining table in my parents’ house, typing at 11:27pm (because well, I have an editing job to finish up, but mostly because I don’t have to go anywhere tomorrow morning). If I don’t want to, I don’t even have to take a bath tomorrow morning because well, I can stay indoors all day! (I most likely will stay indoors, except for those few minutes when I step out to buy hot akara for my akamu). I am spent. You know, I have applied to a couple of places now. Let me start with the first: LS Health Service Commission At the State Health servic...
1 comment
Read more

LIKE FAITH AND LOVE

Gal 5:6 - For [if we are] in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith activated and energized and expressed and working through love. The heart and the lungs are like faith and love, their functions intertwined, their locations proximate, the feelings that they generate just as conclusive. They produce hope for the survival of the physical body, just like faith and love produce hope for the spiritual body’s survival. Experiences of today made me realize something: we need faith intertwined with love to breathe as spirit beings, as much as we need the functional capacity of our cardio-respiratory apparatuses to breathe the breath of life. It’s that important…faith and love I mean.
Post a Comment
Read more