Due date calculator
"Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers--strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength."
Barbara Katz Rothman
Research suggests that the duration of pregnancy may naturally vary by up to five weeks. The date of birth can be determined by calculating 280 days after the start of the last menstruation or more precisely by ultrasound. However, only 4% of women give birth on the “deadline” and only 70% within 10 days of their anticipated due date.
Often, induction starts at 41 + 3 or even earlier. So it is before it is even possible to label pregnancy as prolonged. Very few women experience a really prolonged pregnancy. The idea of post dates also includes the assumption that every pregnancy lasts the same time. However, the ‘normal’ pregnancy of individual women seems to be affected by genetic differences.
Previous studies have shown that baby signals for labour to start, but the precise molecular mechanisms that initiate childbirth remain unclear. Biochemists from UT Southwestern studied models of mice found that two proteins – steroid receptors coactivators 1 and 2 (SRC-1 and SRC-2), – regulatory genes for surface active lung components, promote the onset of labour.