10 Things You Didn't Know About Birth

1. COUNTING THE MINUTES. From conception to delivery of a new human takes about 38 weeks. That’s 266 days or 6,384 hours. Only about 5% of births occur on the “due date.” That’s because it’s the baby, not the doctor or the calendar, who decides when it’s time.

2. FEWER AMERICANS? For a dozen years the U.S. birth rate declined, though it now appears to be stabilizing.
There are about 80.5 million mothers in the United States. The most common birth month is August—with odds favoring a Tuesday (see #8) afternoon. (The fewest American deaths happen in August.) Our lengthening life span results in a smaller proportion of women of childbear-ing age. Birth rates for prime reproductive ages have also plunged. Rates for the 20s and early 30s are generally down, but in mothers 35 to 44 they have trended up and become stable (though not great in numbers) for women over 45.

3. SENDING IN REPLACEMENTS. It takes 2.1 births per mother to replace the population in Europe. The current average is 1.5 children per woman. Hitting 1.0 would rep-resent cutting the population in half. Japan has one of the world’s lowest birth rates at 1.32. South Korea claims the lowest—1.08—according to that country’s National Statis-tical Office.
The world birth rate is about 20 per 1,000 persons. The highest national rates are mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Niger leads with an incredible 50.16 per thousand, Mali at 49.61 per thousand, and Uganda 48.12 (then Afghanistan at 46.21). In general, the developing world’s rates hover in the 40s, 30s, and 20s. Europe, the developed West, and East Asia clump in the teens and under.

4. HEY, A BABY’S A BABY. Statistics from 2006 show out-of-wedlock births at an all-time high—37% that year. Usually associated with teenage mothers, the U.S. teen birth rate is lower than ever. More babies are emerging from the 20-somethings.
Out-of-wedlock births have risen since the late 1990s. Some 4.1 million babies were born in the United States in 2005, more than 1.5 million of those to unmarried women.
This mushrooming of out-of-wedlock children parallels the rise in couples delaying marriage or eschewing it alto-gether. Birth statistics in the 20s age cohort are consistent across ethnic groups, although the percentage rose most sharply among Hispanics.

5. THE UNKINDEST CUT? Thirty percent of U.S. mothers give birth by Caesarean section, with a growing number choosing that method.
More than 80,000 American women a year have elective, pre-planned C-sections.
The National Institutes of Health is studying the risk-to-benefit ratio of what is, after all, major abdominal surgery. The side effects are rare but can include hemorrhage, blood clots, and infections. Women having C-sections also risk complications with future pregnancies.
Caesareans are a potentially life-saving alternative in some high-risk pregnancies. Fetal distress, multiple births, or the presence of certain diseases are important reasons to have one.
But for some women (and doctors!) it’s about convenience— scheduling the birth to fit busy lives. Plan ahead for visiting relatives and friends. Some women fear that something might go wrong with vaginal birth and prefer a planned C-section to an emergency one. Others who live far from a hospital worry that when their water breaks they might not arrive in time.

6. GIMME THAT OLD-TIME BIRTHING. More women are choosing alternative approaches to childbirth. In this century, more women are choosing water birth, Lamaze, acupressure, yoga breathing, hypnosis, and acupuncture to deal with birth pangs.
For generations the norm—especially in big cities—has been to medicate Mom in a hospital maternity ward. But critics remind us that birth is natural, so we should help mothers cope with the pain and view it as work, not simply mask it by doping them up.
In the early 1990s, only two large American hospitals (and a few birthing centers) had water-birthing facilities. By the mid-2000s, about 250 U.S. hospitals and 70% of birth centers were including it.

7. WHEN THINGS GO WRONG. The March of Dimes notes that each year 150,000 babies are born with birth defects, while the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that 3% of all babies born in the U.S. have some abnormality. Most babies born with congenital defects have two normal, healthy parents.

8. WEEKENDS OFF? Uterine contractions are triggered by hormones, not by calendars. Therefore, absent physician in-tervention, births should be evenly distributed across seven days—about 14% on any given day. Not so. In the U.S., more babies are born during the work week—slightly more than 14% from Monday through Friday! Only 12% come on Saturday, and a mere 10% are Sunday babies.
Tuesday is the day most babies were born in 2004.

9. BEYOND TULIPS AND CHEESE. A Dutch study says that women who work high-stress jobs during pregnancy risk their babies’ having low birth weight, crying more, and pos-sibly contracting diabetes and heart disease. A researcher recommends working no more than 24 hours a week.
Some employers would like pregnant women to work zero hours a week. Pregnancy discrimination and improper dismissal suits are on the rise. Suits filed with the Equal Em-ployment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) shot up 39% between 1992 and 2003.

10. AS YOUNG AS YOU FEEL. In 2007, psychologist Frieda Birnbaum of New Jersey became the oldest woman (60) in the
U.S. ever to bear twins. Both were born via C-section. She went for in vitro fertilization at a South African center special-izing in older women. Her 3 other children are 33, 29, and 6.
In 2006 a 59-year-old New Jersey woman gave birth to twins. An Austrian woman became a first-time mom at age 61, then bore her second child at 66. The oldest mother in the world to give birth was a 67-year-old Spanish woman.