Finding Out Your Due Date
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Finding Out Your Due Date
When you are in the early stages of pregnancy, your due date is one of the most exciting and sought after pieces of information. Knowing the day your bundle of joy will arrive makes the whole experience real for perhaps the first time.
The traditional way of doing this is to assume that the length of gestation is two hundred and sixty six days long and conception happens fourteen days into your monthly cycle. Due dates have been predicted in this way for over a hundred years. However, not every woman ovulates every twenty eight days and not every pregnancy lasts the same amount of weeks. So when you work out your due date bear in mind that this is to be used as a rough guide and can't be relied on to be exact. You can work this date out for yourself using a due date calculator or a due date chart. Start with the first day of your last period and the calculations can be done from there.
Alternatively you could simply wait until your first OBGYN visit. Through ultrasound, doctors can look at the development and size of the baby to predict what exact stage of pregnancy you're in. Everyone around you will ask when your baby is due so it's nice to have a date and to be able to look forward to that time in the future, but remember that your baby will appear when it is ready and no amount of calculating and measuring will change that. In this instance, your baby is in charge!
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| Susan Sayour |
