nulligravida

Births are also classified by birth order¹, e.g. first births, second births, etc. Birth order is usually determined by considering all previous births to the mother³, and sometimes only births of the present marriage². 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 order⁴ 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 order⁵ is made by counting all known pregnancies. In medical parlance, a woman is called nulligravida⁶ if she has never been pregnant; the terms primigravida⁷ and multigravida⁸ respectively are used for a woman who is pregnant for the first time or who has been pregnant before. Women are also classified by parity⁹, 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 nullipara¹⁰ or nulliparous¹⁰. Similarly, a woman is termed a primipara¹¹ and deemed to be primiparous¹¹ at her first confinement and a multipara¹² or multiparous¹² at subsequent confinements.

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