How Many Weeks Are in. Is the Best Time to Have a Baby

In her living room, Caroline Nagy introduces the newest member of her family — the 6-week-old infant in a striped onesie cradled in her arms. "This is Alex Joseph. He was born May 24th — my birthday," she says.

Their shared birthday wasn't entirely a coincidence. Two weeks before her due appointment, Nagy was swollen, and uncomfortable. And then she asked her doctor for relief.

"I was just miserable. It was like uncomfortable to walk; I couldn't sit on the floor and play; I felt like I was neglecting my offset kid because I just couldn't motility and I couldn't practice annihilation," says Nagy. "So I asked, 'Is there any style I can speed this up and have a baby earlier?' "

For Jackie McGinty, it wasn't discomfort simply timing that acquired her to schedule her daughter's birth by C-section eight years agone. McGinty's first child was delivered by C-section for medical reasons, and although this fourth dimension effectually she had hoped to evangelize naturally, she had just moved out of country and wanted her family nearby to help with the baby.

"My mom was coming out and she was only going to come out for a few weeks. I needed her to be there after the birth. ... So having the option to schedule it was good for us," says McGinty.

Harm In Planning As well Far Alee?

Stories like these are common. Statistics show that from 1990 to 2006 the pct of women who induced labor more than doubled, and nigh a 3rd of women were having cesareans.

Caroline Nagy and her now 8-week-old infant in Youngstown, Ohio. Nagy says she had labor induced early at 39 weeks because she was uncomfortable and felt as though she was neglecting her other child. Gretchen Cuda Kroen for NPR hibernate explanation

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Gretchen Cuda Kroen for NPR

Caroline Nagy and her now 8-week-old infant in Youngstown, Ohio. Nagy says she had labor induced early on at 39 weeks because she was uncomfortable and felt as though she was neglecting her other child.

Gretchen Cuda Kroen for NPR

The increase wasn't because of emergencies, says Jay Iams, a specialist in maternal fetal medicine at Ohio Land University, but rather considering women and doctors began scheduling deliveries for convenience — "convenience for the mother, for the family, for the physician," says Iams. Sometimes, Iams says, information technology'south because patients say to themselves, " 'I desire only my doctor to exist there. I don't want the person who'due south on call.' "

Having a baby naturally requires lots of planning. Simply when information technology comes to the arrival date of your package of joy, experts at present say that planning likewise far ahead can practice more than impairment than good.

A full-term pregnancy lasts 40 weeks, merely elective deliveries are often planned for ii or three weeks earlier. And even though 37 weeks is as well still considered full term, studies prove that babies born even a few weeks too early on are at greater risk for health problems than those who are born later. That has some doctors campaigning to curb the trend of scheduled labor and delivery.

Pediatrician Ed Donovan of Cincinnati Children'due south Hospital says data collected over the past several decades testify those babies have an increased risk of complications compared with waiting until the mother goes into labor spontaneously.

"It's now actually well-documented in national studies that the risk of the baby having to require intensive care in a neonatal intensive care unit of measurement — even the hazard of babe death — is increased when the baby is born every bit little as ii weeks before the due date," says Donovan.

Organ Systems Maturing At Different Rates

The reasons for this are two-fold. Outset, without an ultrasound measurement in the first trimester, a woman's due date could be as much as two weeks off, making the fetus 35 weeks instead of 37. And second, Donovan says the brain, heart, lungs, and immune organisation all mature at dissimilar rates — and some may demand a little more time than others.

"Just because the lungs are mature doesn't hateful that the other organ systems are mature," says Donovan. "A infant born three weeks early with mature lungs may non exist ready to eat considering the brain's not fully developed."

According to Donovan, doctors realized they just weren't very expert at determining which babies were ready and which weren't. And Iams says the large numbers of sick babies made many doctors begin to remember differently about early deliveries.

"Thirty-seven weeks is term, just they became the nearly common occupants of neonatal intensive care nurseries," says Iams. "And the pediatricians naturally said, 'They could have waited.' "

Still, many women and even many obstetricians remained unaware of the risks considering information technology didn't fit with their experience.

"People see their friends having babies early, and sometimes women go into labor on their own at 37, 38 weeks — and that's non unusual and those babies are fine," says Jennifer Bailit, an obstetrician at Metro Wellness Medical Center in Cleveland. "Simply those are babies that take told us that they're coming and that they're ready."

Convincing Mothers It's Worth The Wait

Bailit is role of an endeavour led past Iams and Donovan to reduce the number of scheduled deliveries before 39 weeks across the state of Ohio. Bailit says that she often has to explicate to women the importance of those last few weeks — and that the discomfort is normal but something that needs to be endured for the sake of the baby.

"It's tough to be significant, and sometimes when you're in the moment information technology's difficult to keep the large movie in mind," Bailit says. "When we guide people toward that kind of thinking it really helps them say, 'I'yard doing this for my baby; it's worth information technology.' "

In improver to helping doctors like Bailit educate pregnant women, Iams and Donavan asked doctors at the 20 largest hospitals in the land to certificate a medical reason every time a woman was scheduled to deliver before 39 weeks. And much to their surprise, Iams says in under 15 months the rates of those deliveries dropped from 15 percent to nether v pct. And more than important, the number of babies admitted to neonatal intensive care also decreased.

And the thought is catching on across the country. The March of Dimes has taken what began in Ohio and a few other select states and extended it nationwide in a campaign it's calling "Healthy Babies are Worth the Await." Alan Fleischman of the March of Dimes says the rate of elective births in the hospitals the organization has surveyed is about 30 percentage.

"Most hospital leaders don't believe they accept this problem until they actually measure it," says Fleischman. "And when they do, they're surprised."

As in Ohio, their preliminary information show that in only a short period of time, even hospitals with very high rates of scheduled deliveries are able to reduce them to about 5 percent or less past making a few elementary changes — and in turn, increase the likelihood of a good for you baby.

Although inductions at 39 weeks and beyond are considered prophylactic, some doctors experience that unless there is a medical reason to evangelize early on, the best labor plan for women is an erstwhile-fashioned one: Hang in in that location and wait until labor starts on its ain.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/138473097/doctors-to-pregnant-women-wait-at-least-39-weeks

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