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Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English volume

Multigravida

Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English vol.
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Multigravida  (MULTIGRAVIDA)


Births are also classified by birth order 1, e.g. first births, second births, etc. Birth order is usually determined by considering all previous births to the mother 3, and sometimes only births of the present marriage 2. Birth order is generally based on live births only, but occasionally late foetal deaths are taken into account as well. A classification of women by confinement order 4 is made in the same way as for births by counting all pregnancies which lasted at least 28 weeks, and reckoning multiple births as one confinement (cf. 603-4). Similarly a classification by pregnancy order 5 is made by counting all known pregnancies. In medical parlance, a woman is called nulligravida 6 if she has never been pregnant; the terms primigravida 7 and multigravida 8 respectively are used for a woman who is pregnant for the first time or who has been pregnant before. Women are also classified by parity 9, usually on the basis of the number of children born alive, although in biological literature the term refers to the number of confinements, and a woman who has had no confinement at all is said to be a nullipara 10 or nulliparous 10. Similarly, a woman is termed a primipara 11 and deemed to be primiparous 11 at her first confinement and a multipara 12 or multiparous 12 at subsequent confinements.

  • 1. Higher order births are births occurring after the last specified order, e.g. fifth and higher order births.
  • 9. A woman who has not borne any live children is called a zero-parity woman, a one-parity woman has borne one child but no more, and so on.

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