Pregnancy Due Date Calculator

Happy tidings are brought home with the ushering of pregnancy. Your life would now change, revolving round a whirlwind of activities, like buying cribs, stroller, diapers, dresses and many more! The day you know you are first pregnant it seems to be a long time of nine months to go but it actually is not. Actually you have to follow a series of activities step by step.

The first step that crosses ones mind when one is pregnant, when is the baby due? What is the due date and how can it be calculated? The due date can be calculated very easily through a number of methods. The due date is often not very exact and so it is calculated within two weeks of the calculated due date. The due date can be calculated if the date of conception is known but that happens rarely and so the woman’s first day of the last menstrual cycle is considered.

Through the LMP Method or the last menstrual method, the first day of the last menstrual cycle is taken and on that 40 weeks is added and two weeks taken away from there. For an instance the woman's last period date was November 1st, 2007 adding forty weeks would make it August 1st 2008 and taking away two weeks would give you 15th July, 2008. Two weeks are taken away from the forty weeks because it is believes a woman's ovulation period can be two weeks.

The other method of pregnancy due date calculation is using the Naegle's rule. You have to count the 1st day of the last cycle. Then you have to count backwards 3 months and add seven days to it. Online you can use the simple due date calculator when they ask you to fill in the last menstrual date and then you can calculate the due date from there.

The pregnancy due date given the mother a scope to calculate not only the day of the baby's arrival but also to keep in mind, when the organs of the baby develops, the 2nd and the 3rd trimester.

In the past the woman used the moon's phase to calculate the pregnancy due date. When the woman guessed she had conceived, she would look at the moon’s phase and calculate from that day the 10th phase she had missed the periods. Then she would know the due date was near.

There are pregnancy calendars available online which not helps you check the due date but also give you a full account of the everyday developments of your pregnancy. It tells you the different phases through which the baby grows, the trimesters and what should be expected by a mother at a particular stage. It also tells the mother the tests she should go for, the medicines to take and all this for a happy child birth. The pregnancy calendar is a thing that should be kept handy by all mothers. You can look into it each day and often get impatient and look ahead. But at the end of it all, it is one good guide, a friend and companion that would chaperon you through your pregnancy days and make you feel that you are on the right path and all will be positive at the end.