How To Calculate Your Pregnancy Due Date

After spending a lot of time as a couple, you finally decided to start your family and have your first child. You have conceived the child, the pregnancy has been confirmed and now you are eagerly waiting for his/her arrival. Though you know that for another few months, you will have to keep him/her within you, the eagerness does not abate. Now, you want to know the exact date when the baby is due. While it does not bring the moment any close, knowing your pregnancy due date surely makes the wait much more bearable. So, go through the following lines and know how to calculate your pregnancy due date.

 

On an average, the length of a normal pregnancy is 40 weeks, or 280 days, from the first day of the last normal menstrual period of the mother. So, if you want to know the due date of your pregnancy, it is very important for you to be aware of the date of your last menstrual period. After you have determined that date, all you have to do is add nine months and seven days to the date. Voila! You have the date at which your baby will be able to open his/her eyes to the world and brighten up your days.

 

We will explain the calculation of pregnancy due date with the help of a short and simple examples. Let us assume that the first day of the last normal menstrual period of the mother was 1st March. Now, you will first have to add seven days to that date, which brings us the date 8^th March. Next, add further nine months to that date and you have the month of December. So, you have the due date of pregnancy, also known as Expected Date of Confinement (EDC) or due date in short, as 8^th December.

 

While all the doctors calculate and give a due date to the expectant mothers, the birth hardly takes place on the exact date. In fact, many of the births take place before and some after the date. However, it has been estimated that about 80 percent of babies are born within ten days of the due date, be it before or after. Nevertheless, the birth that occurs within ten days before or after the expected date is called full term only. Talking about the rest 20 percent of the births, about 8 to 10 percent take place between 20^th and 36^th week of pregnancy, while around 8 percent occur later than the 42^nd week.

 

In case the pregnancy occurs even before 37 weeks of pregnancy are over, it is called premature, or preterm, delivery. It is believed to be associated with the following conditions: