Due date and your baby's likely Nakshatra

From the first day of your last period, we add 280 days (40 weeks), adjusted if your cycle is longer or shorter than 28 days. This is the standard method doctors call Naegele's rule. If you know the date of conception, we add 266 days. If you already have a due date from a scan, you can enter it directly.

It is an estimate. Only about 1 baby in 20 is born on the due date itself, and a healthy baby can arrive anywhere from about 37 to 42 weeks. A dating scan in early pregnancy is more reliable than any calculator, so follow the date your doctor gives you.

Not exactly, because a baby's janma Nakshatra is the Moon's star at the moment of birth, and nobody can know that moment in advance. What we can do is show the Moon's Nakshatra and Pada for each day around the due date, so you can think about likely starting letters. The Moon changes Pada about every six hours.

The Moon moves through one Nakshatra in about a day, and through one Pada in about six hours. So one calendar day usually shows the Moon in a few different Padas, each with its own starting letter.

That is a personal decision for you, your doctor and your family, and medical advice must come first. Delivery timing should only ever follow your doctor's advice about the safety of mother and baby. This tool is for planning names, not for planning the birth.

No. Everything is worked out in your browser, and the dates are not sent to us or stored.

It is just for fun. We show the Chinese zodiac animal for the year of the due date, using the lunar new year dates, which fall in January or February.