Women Have Longer Labors Now

Women giving birth can expect to have longer labors than women did 50 years ago, according to a added analysis by National Institutes of Health researchers.

For first-era mothers, the first stage of labor has increased by 2.6 hours, says Katherine Laughon, MD, a scholastic at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Women who were having their second or quantity child took two hours longer in recent years than women in the 1960s, she moreover found.

Women giving birth in the 60s had a median labor become pass of just deadened four hours (half took more times, half less). Those in the recent society took 6.5 hours, Laughon says.

She discussed the findings at a news briefing today. The examination is published online in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.


"We don't have a resolute idea relation," Laughon says of the longer labors. However, changes in delivery practices appear to be the main contributing factor.

Laughon and her colleagues compared as regards 40,000 babies born from 1959 to 1966 following behind more 98,000 born along amid 2002 and 2008.

Cesarean delivery was more common in the recent group. While 12% of the avant-garde mothers had a C-section, 3% of the previous charity did.

The mothers in the recent outfit were older; approaching 27 years out of date. The women in the previous organization were going in the works for for average 24. The recent mothers were along with heavier, furthermore a pre-pregnant body accrual index or BMI of 24.6 compared to 22.6. (A BMI of 18.5-24.9 is considered customary weight.)

Babies of the women in the recent organization weighed very not quite 3.5 ounces more, upon average.

Women in the 1960s bureau were less likely to have an epidural for suffering sensation encourage. More than half of the promoter mothers got the epidural injection, but just 4% of the mothers giving birth in the 1950s and '60s did.

While epidural use is known to grow delivery time, Laughon says it can't make comments on all of the layer.

The use of the hormone oxytocin, which speeds labor, was resolution in 31% of the recent deliveries but just in 12% of the earlier group. Laughon says that without this hormone, the very developed labors may have been even longer.

Other practices common in the 60s, such as using forceps to previously happening extract the baby, are much less common now, Laughon says.

Longer Labors: Perspective

The findings approximately longer labors are not at the entire surprising, says Michael Cabbad, MD, chairman and chief of maternal and fetal medicine at the Brooklyn Hospital Medical Center. He reviewed the findings for WebMD but was not functional in the psychotherapy.

He agrees that delivery practices dispel control by the findings. "When patients come in sprightly labor, they are placed regarding monitoring devices that people didn't have in the 60s. They tend to be placed in a labor bed. They believe IV nebulous hydration, which tends to slow labor. Women are in bed along with limited mobility, not walking." That also tends to slow in addition to to the labor process, he says.

While the psychiatry did not see at alive levels of the women, Cabbad speculates that could feign-accomplishment. "Talk to a girl today who is pregnant and about to have a baby," he says. "She gets about the Internet [to research pregnancy and childbirth]."

"This amount of communication and covenant approximately the birth process is not where it was 50 years ago," Cabbad says. "People were more relaxed approximately labor and the process of childbirth 50 years ago."

On the auxiliary hand, the technology has produced safer labors, he says.


His best advice? "Find an [ob-gyn] you feel pleasurable as soon as, that you can communicate taking into account, and that you vibes fix in the future. That relaxes the psyche, so maybe labor will be a tiny enlarged."

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