According to science, this is the most dangerous time to give birth

While you might have an idea of how and when you want to give birth, more often than not your baby will arrive when he or she is ready, and not a moment before.

Unless you have a planned caesarean, when your baby is delivered is often beyond your control, but that hasn’t stopped experts debating the safest time of day for mums-to-be to deliver their newborns.

While previous studies have hinted that weekends are considered to be more dangerous, other research has indicated that the time of day could have the biggest impact with some experts considering daytime deliveries to be safer than births taking place at night.

But now there’s a new piece of research to be tossed into the mix. A team of scientists at the University of Texas in Austin have suggested that the number of hours an obstetrician has been at work before an unscheduled birth that could play a part in the risk factor.

They found the risk of mum suffering blood loss and a newborn suffering low oxygen levels, increased when a doctor enters the ninth hour of a 12-hour shift.

Speaking about the findings, Dr James Scott, an associate professor of statistics told The Sun: “There are all sorts of studies about the timing of deliveries, but what nobody had looked at before is whether there is some kind of proxy for how fatigued the doctors are.”

“We find that there’s a peak eight to 10 hours after the beginning of a shift when, relative to baseline, the risk of maternal blood loss exceeding 1.5 litres increase by 30 per cent, and arterial pH, a marker for infant distress, is at increased risk of falling below 7.1.”

Normal arterial pH is regarded as a level between 7.3 and 7.4.

Dr Scott’s team said that fatigue could potentially lead to doctors missing small foetal distress signals.

Researchers looked at 24,506 unscheduled deliveries in the UK between January 2008 and October 2013.

The obstetricians, all from the same labour and delivery ward, worked 12-hour shifts throughout the study. The findings, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, showed no significant differences in the rates of common adverse outcomes between day versus night deliveries. And going against previously research, no pattern was found for weekday versus weekend deliveries or vaginal versus C-section deliveries, nor was there any difference between junior or senior doctors.

But while the ninth hour of a doctor’s shift was found to be more dangerous, surprisingly researchers found that the risk was lower in the last two hours of a doctors shift when they would likely be most tired.

Having spoken to the doctors about this, researchers theorised that the lower risk was likely due to doctors passing more complicated cases to their colleagues coming in on the next shift.

But pregnant women have no need to feel concerned about the findings as further research has revealed that despite the increases in the number of births and the increasing complexity of cases, the quality and outcomes of maternity services have improved significantly over the last decade.

The National Maternity Review revealed last year that the stillbirth and neonatal mortality rate in England fell by over 20% in the ten years from 2003 to 2013. And the same report revealed that maternal mortality rates in the UK have reduced from 14 deaths per 100,000 maternities to 9 deaths per 100,000 maternities over the same period.

So you’ll likely be in safe hands no matter when your baby decides to put in an appearance.

Now we just have to debate the merits of summer versus winter babies.

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