Most women, when they become pregnant are anxious to know when their due date is. However some women are also interested in when they conceived and therefore start to research how to discover the conception date of a baby.
When counting the length of a pregnancy doctors actually start from around two weeks before conception actually takes place. This is because they use the first day of your last period as a marker for this. Once you know this date you can then work out your due date.
Most women do not know their exact conception date. In fact you are only likely to know this if you have used fertility treatment such as In Vitro Fertilization. It is much harder to know if you had a natural conception.
A woman is at the height of her fertility during the middle of her cycle. Therefore it is a fair assumption that most women conceive during this time. Most fertility calculators work this out by assuming two important factors, that you have a 28 day cycle and that you conceived two weeks after your last period started.
There are more accurate ways to work out the date you conceived. Ovulation is the key to this because conception needs to take place within 24 hours of an egg being released. If you know your ovulation pattern then you will be able to predict your conception date.
So to work out your conception date it is important to know your ovulation times. Whatever the length of your menstrual cycle the luteal phase is almost always fourteen days long. This is the second half of your cycle after ovulation. Therefore to work out your point of ovulation you can subtract fourteen days from the start of menstruation. The date of conception would either be the day of or the day after the day of ovulation.
One common misconception is that the day of conception is the same day that you had intercourse. However this is not always the case. Sperm can live in the body for up to five days so the date of conception could actually be any one of these five days. This would be dependant on your ovulation dates.
If you already know your due date then you can easily work out your conception date with the use of a conception calculator. These can be found on many websites. All you need to do is enter your due date and it will tell you when you most likely conceived. You can work this out yourself by taking your due date and counting back 266 days. This number comes from the 280 days of your pregnancy and subtracting the 14 days previous to the conception.
If you are simply looking to know when you conceived so that you can work out when you are due then it would be easier to use a special calculator to determine your due date. These calculate your due date from the beginning of your last period and can be found on many internet sites.
Want to discover the conception date of a baby? Get the inside scoop on the best due date calculator by conception date in our fab conception date calculator guide.
