Calculating Your Delivery Date
It would be amazing if you could accurately calculate your delivery date. However, the best one can do is to calculate a date which is close to your actual delivery date. Calculating the due date seem to work well for women who have a fairly regular menstrual cycle. In case of women with irregular menstrual cycle, it may be difficult to calculate the estimated delivery date. Since calculating the due date is important, doctors may measure the size of the uterus during your initial internal pregnancy examination to estimate your delivery date. An ultrasound scan can help in calculating the delivery date.
How To Calculate Your Estimated Date Of Delivery (EDD)
The average duration of pregnancy is 266 days from the time of conception. As it is hard to know accurately when conception occurred, usually the delivery date is calculated from the first day of your last menstrual period (LMP). Here it means that your expected date of delivery (EDD) will be 280 days from your LMP. To calculate your EDD, find the date of your LMP in the left-hand columns of the chart opposite. The date in the adjacent right- hand column is your EDD. You must remember that this is only as estimated date, and in fact very few babies were born on their given date. In particular, it is difficult to foretell your delivery date if you do not have regular 28-days cycle. Doctors determine that a normal pregnancy length can be anything from 38 to 42 weeks.
A simple formula to calculate EDD is below
Date of LMP + 7 = Date of EDD
Month of Delivery = 9 Months from Month of LMP
Example – If your LMP is 5th of January.
Date of EDD = Date of LMP + 7
= 5 + 7 = 12
Month of Delivery = 9 Months from Month of LMP
= September
Therefore your EDD would be 12th September.
