A Pregnancy Calculator Determines the Arrival of Something Wonderful

A pregnancy calculator is a wonderful tool that helps a newly expectant mother determine roughly the due date by which to expect her unborn child to arrive. There are many websites that offer the service of a due date calculator or pregnancy calculator. In fact, most will provide a weekly or daily newsletter to inform you of the baby's developmental stage and the mother's development progress as the pregnancy progresses through the forty-week experience.

Taking the Secret Out of the Baby's Arrival

A visit to the doctor will provide an expectant date of delivery by which all medical professionals will recognize during your pregnancy. This may or may not match with the date that you expect to be true. However, doctors have a special little wheel or pregnancy calculator that calculates the due date based upon the date of your last menstrual cycles, the length of your last menstrual cycle and moves forward ten months. It then subtracts two weeks and that identifies roughly the date of delivery. Basically how it is calculated is the addition of 40 weeks or 280 days to the approximate first date of your last menstrual period. Another quick method to identify your approximate due date is to identify the first date of your last menstrual cycle, add seven days and then subtract three months. When you are calculating a pregnancy in this manner, it is giving you a gestational age of the baby. The gestational age of a baby is how the medical professionals will keep track of your pregnancy and your baby's development.

Websites Offer A Variety of Helpful Pregnancy Calculators

Websites such as babyzone.com, pregnancyweekly.com or babycenter.com (just to name a few) offer a wonderful pregnancy calculator that allows you to enter the date of your last period, the number of days between your monthly cycle. The provided date is generally based upon a woman that has a twenty-eight day cycle and may not be as accurate for a woman that has a longer or shorter cycle.

It is important to remember that a pregnancy calculator is not a perfect science, only 5% of women actually deliver on their due date. Medical professionals use this date as an estimate to monitor and gage the growth of the baby. While it is fun to estimate, plan and prepare for baby's arrival on a specific date, the fact remains that the baby is going to arrive whenever it wants too.