New tool: a pregnancy due date calculator that also plans your clinic visits

Health and wellbeing
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I have added another free tool to the site, a pregnancy due date calculator built for South Africa. Most due date calculators stop at the date. This one goes further and turns your due date into your actual antenatal clinic visits, on real dates, using the public sector BANC+ schedule that clinics follow.

You can work it out three ways, from the first day of your last period, from a due date you already have, or from a dating scan. It then tells you the due date, how many weeks and days along you are today, which trimester you are in, and how long you have to go. If your cycle is not 28 days you can enter your own and it adjusts.

Below that it lays out all eight antenatal contacts as dates you can plan around, the booking visit and then follow ups at 20, 26, 30, 34, 36, 38 and 40 weeks, each with a short plain explanation of what happens, the booking bloods, the repeat haemoglobin and HIV tests, the check that baby is head down, and so on. You can tick each visit off, add them to your phone calendar with a reminder the day before, and print the whole plan for your clinic card.

It also shows a clear danger-signs list, the things that mean you should go to the clinic the same day rather than wait for your next visit.

Try it here: Pregnancy Due Date Calculator South Africa

A few honest notes. A due date is the middle of a normal range, not a fixed day, a healthy baby can come any time from 37 to 42 weeks, and an early dating scan is more accurate than the period date. It is general health information, not medical advice, so always follow the dates and advice your own clinic or midwife gives you. When baby arrives, the immunisation schedule tool takes over from there.

If you have used the public clinics, does the eight visit BANC+ schedule match what you were given?

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A quick update, I have added a few things to the pregnancy due date calculator based on what the leading calculators offer.

You can now work out your dates five ways, not three. On top of last period, a due date you already have, and a dating scan, you can now use your conception or ovulation date, or your IVF embryo transfer date. The IVF option asks whether it was a day 5 blastocyst or a day 3 transfer and dates it exactly, which is the most accurate of the lot.

The results now also show your estimated conception date and, just for fun, the star sign of a baby born on the due date, with the honest reminder that only about 1 in 20 babies actually arrive on the day.

I have also filled out the key dates so you can see the two scans people plan around, the 12 week dating scan and the 20 week anatomy scan, alongside viability at 24 weeks, the start of the third trimester, early term at 37 weeks and full term at 39 weeks.

Same link: Pregnancy Due Date Calculator South Africa

If you went through IVF or you track your ovulation, give the new options a try and tell me if the due date matches what your clinic gave you.

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This is the kind of tool that actually saves lives if clinics themselves would push it to expecting mothers, because so many women in rural Limpopo miss visits simply because they lose track of dates, not because they don’t care. My worry is data, a lot of the women who need this most don’t have smartphones with reliable data to check a website every week. Maybe a printed version handed out at the first clinic visit would reach more people than the app ever will.