ISTR research that suggested the "due date" given by the usual calculation as at least a week early, but can't remember where I saw it. (Other than the writeup was done by someone I trusted to both check and understand the statistics.) Funnily enough, it's hard to search for; there seem to be a lot of hits for all the search terms involved :)
As I recall, the explanation was that the "correct" due date was calculated using the mean of all live births - including those that are definitely premature. But almost no-one goes more than a couple of weeks "overdue", because if you're over it's time to induce, whereas one baby that's sixteen weeks early cancels out a lot of those.... And once you recalculated the figures including only non-induced, non-premature (I don't remember quite where they drew the line on premature, but I think it was basically "able to survive without intensive care"), the "normal" suddenly got a bit later.
All of which is basically a lengthy way of saying "don't worry". Also, cake omnomnomnomnomnom. Hopefully see you soon (and sorry to miss you when I was over for CEB's party.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-03-16 01:45 pm (UTC)As I recall, the explanation was that the "correct" due date was calculated using the mean of all live births - including those that are definitely premature. But almost no-one goes more than a couple of weeks "overdue", because if you're over it's time to induce, whereas one baby that's sixteen weeks early cancels out a lot of those.... And once you recalculated the figures including only non-induced, non-premature (I don't remember quite where they drew the line on premature, but I think it was basically "able to survive without intensive care"), the "normal" suddenly got a bit later.
All of which is basically a lengthy way of saying "don't worry". Also, cake omnomnomnomnomnom. Hopefully see you soon (and sorry to miss you when I was over for CEB's party.)