Primiparous is an adjective describing certain aspects of a woman’s reproductive state. When a women is declared primiparous, she is either pregnant with her first child or has had a first child already. The term can be changed to noun form, and a woman pregnant with her first child or having given birth to that child is a primipara. The medical community principally uses these appellations or might symbolically represent a primipara as para 1.
There’s another term that may used in place of primiparous: primigravida. The terms essentially substitute one for the other, and either could be used in a medical setting. Both words are understood as either being pregnant for the first time or having already had a first birth.
Things change when women have not been pregnant or have had several births. If a person is not yet primiparous, she is usually nulliparous or nulligravida. Special notation may exist if a woman has previously had abortions or miscarriages.
To achieve the state where the medical community counts a pregnancy as having ended in birth very much depends on regional definitions. In some cases, giving birth occurs any time after age of potential viability is reached. In this case, whether miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion occurs, after about the 20-25th weeks, the pregnancy would be considered complete and the woman is primiparous. If abortion or miscarriage occurred earlier, the woman might still be considered nulliparous, though doctors would clearly note existence of previous miscarriages or pregnancies in other ways.
Other sets of descriptions apply to women who have completed more than one pregnancy. The woman who has given “birth,” as it is defined in a region, two times is biparous or multigravida. Multiparous usually refers to women who have had at least three children. Once women have given birth four times or more they may be described as grand multiparas.
One distinction important to note with terms like primigravida and primiparous is that neither refer to the number of children being delivered in a single birth. A woman could have sextuplets in a first delivery and she would still be primiparous until birth resulting from a second pregnancy. Again, the notation is useful but it can’t fully account for all the medical circumstances that are unique to the particular person being treated. A primiparous woman who had sextuplets might have a high-risk second birth and need to be watched carefully.
Principally, the notation is useful and can be a way for medical professionals to discuss specific types of women who are pregnant or laboring. Such labels don’t speak to all medical concerns. Generally, they give the medical profession a convenient set of terms to use in discussions about patients that separates them by number of times they have given birth.