Are due dates really that important? Since they are rarely accurate?
Immediately you get the news of your pregnancy, you are all excited and you look forward to your baby’s birth. Then you manually calculate your baby’s due date. Knowing fully well that around 5% of babies are actually born on their “expected day,” why then do we bother about knowing our due dates?
Before the first ultrasound is conducted, a pregnant woman’s due date is calculated using the “Naegle’s rule” which means that baby’s due date is 40 weeks after the mum’s last period. And when the ultrasound is conducted, this involves taking a measurement of the foetus and using the measurement to calculate a more accurate due date (Still not 100% sure).
The day when the baby is born is usually a far cry from the predicted due date. And this causes most women to be disappointed when on the day of their expected due date they see not even a Braxton hicks contraction. You can imagine the disappointment of seeing a day they have so looked forward to all through their pregnancy come and go without a peep from the baby.
Most Mamalettes complain that they passed their due date without seeing any signs of labour and the response they usually get from their fellow mothers is that they didn’t give birth on their due date either.
Most expectant mothers do not believe in the accuracy of due dates because it has caused disappointments for most of them, but despite that, this information is important for your health care providers. Knowing the baby’s due date helps your doctor to make sure that the right things are being done at the right time.
For instance, if the only information you can give your doctor is that the date of your last menstruation was…. do you think that’s really helpful to the doctor? He wouldn’t know what and what to prescribe or where to start with you.
When you have an accurate due date, good pregnancy care is easy for your maternity health providers because the more information they have, the better for you, baby and them. It is especially important if the expectant mother is old, or around 40 years old.
Also, if your health care providers think your pregnancy is further along than it really is, there’s a risk that your baby might be born too early.
Since so much depends on the accuracy of the baby’s due date, the question is; will there ever be accuracy in calculating baby’s due dates?
A study has found that a continuous late scan to measure the length of the cervix during the later part of the pregnancy should accurately predict when a woman will start labour.
For some time now, the length of the cervix has been effectively used to detect a woman’s chance of premature labour, the shorter the cervix, the higher the chances of the woman going into labour soon.
With this discovery, the researchers took the study a step further by finding out if measuring cervical length could be used in accurately predicting full term birth.
In the research, it was discovered that if the cervix measured more than 30mm at a woman’s due date her chances of delivering within 7 days is is 50%. Although, when the cervix measures 10mm or less, the pregnant woman’s chance of delivering within 7 days is more than 85%.
In summary, having a more accurate due date can help in reducing a woman’s anxiety about the start of labour.
It helps them to prepare for leave, make plans for baby’s delivery, make plans for how their kids will be taken care of while they are in labour.
And also, it provides obstetricians with the information that would help them improve or even save the mother and baby’s life.
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