- With Mayo Clinic certified nurse-midwife
Mary Murry, R.N., C.N.M.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
Mary Murry, R.N., C.N.M.
Mary Murry, R.N., C.N.M.
Mary Murry is a nurse-midwife practitioner who is certified by the American College of Nurse-Midwives.
A Cincinnati native, she is a nurse-midwife and instructor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
Mary has been a nurse-midwife practitioner for more than 20 years. She co-edited the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy.
Her research interests include adult female survivors of sexual abuse, women's perception of pain in labor and obesity in pregnancy.
Latest entries
- Postpartum bleeding
Feb. 4, 2010
- Breast-feeding and working moms
Jan. 9, 2010
- Breast-feeding: Nobody said it would be this hard
Dec. 17, 2009
- Swelling in pregnancy
Dec. 4, 2009
- H1N1 vaccine and pregnancy
Oct. 27, 2009
Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Pregnancy and you blog
-
Dec. 20, 2008
What does 'due date' mean?
By Mary Murry, R.N., C.N.M.
Do you have a due date and wonder just what it means? It's a good question.
A due date is arrived at in one or more ways. The most common way is to take the first day of your last menstrual period, subtract 3 months and add 7 days. Then there is the gestational wheel where one arrow is put on the first day of your last menstrual period and the other arrow points to your due date.
You can use the due date calculator in the links below, put in your first day of your last period and get a due date. Now you have one date. Then you see your health care provider and do an ultrasound. Say it looks like the baby is a week bigger. Now what? Does that change your due date? It all depends on when the ultrasound was done.
There are specific times when ultrasound is very accurate for dating and other times when it is not as useful. I have known women who have been told they have 3 or 4 different due dates. It can get very confusing. Any due date is plus or minus two weeks. So you can have your baby anywhere from 2 weeks before your due date to 2 weeks after your due date and be pretty much on time.
It is very hard not to focus on the wonderful date you have been given. That is the day you get your body back. That is the day you become a mom, whether for the first time or the last time. That is the day you expect to see your feet again. The odds are not in your favor that you will deliver on that day. About 40 percent of women have their babies before their due date, about 46 percent of women have their babies after their due dates and only 4 percent have them on their due date.
I have no special words of wisdom for you about the due date. You won't stay pregnant forever. The baby will come when it is supposed to. This is another one of those lessons in control pregnancy teaches us.
If you have some thoughts or experiences to share about due dates, please do! Thanks.
18 comments posted