CDC Study Reveals Top Baby Arrival Times

Babies come any time and completely on their own schedules, no matter day or night. Yet a new study examines how the majority of births in the United States seem to take place during regular business hours than during off hours, which may be explained in part by certain medical interventions.

"We almost laugh when we try to plan our day," said Dr. Astrid Jain, an OB-GYN at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, via USA Today Health. "Because you know the part of the wonderful part of labor of delivery is that there is no plan." 

For the study, researchers looked at information from birth certificates from 41 states. They found that babies were more likely to be born between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. than other times of the day. Furthermore, when equally spacing out births throughout the day, researchers found that 4.2 percent of babies would be delivered during each of the 24 hours in a day but that the percentage of births were higher than average for every hour from the aforementioned time period.

At 8 a.m., births peaked, with 6.3 percent of babies born during this time. Six percent of babies were also born around noon. However, less than 3 percent were born during each hour between midnight and 7 a.m., according to researchers.

"Differences in the likelihood of delivery during the day are partly due to childbirth interventions such as cesarean delivery and induction of labor," researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted, according to a news release.

Furthermore, the hour with the highest percentage of Cesarean sections came in at 8 a.m., when 11.6 percent of all C-sections were performed, while 7 percent of C-sections were performed around noon. On the other hand, induced vaginal deliveries increased throughout the morning hours, peaking around 3 p.m., and decreasing after 6 p.m.

Yet vaginal deliveries that were not induced were more evenly distributed throughout the day with weekend births more likely to occur in the late evening and early morning hours than births on weekdays, according to Health Day.  

Lastly, though babies were more likely to be delivered in a hospital, those delivered outside of hospitals were more likely to be born in the early morning hours when compared to those born in a medical facility.