A recent multi-country analysis of the average pregnancy length and timing of birth in the US, England, and the Netherlands suggests that the US could enhance maternity care outcomes by reducing medical interventions during childbirth.
The maternal and infant mortality rates in the United States are alarmingly high compared to other wealthy nations and European countries, and maternal health outcomes continue to deteriorate. A new study from researchers at Boston University School of Public Health and Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is shedding light on the possible impact of hospital organizational structures and staffing in US maternity care on the birthing process and adverse birth outcomes.
The study, published in PLOS ONE, compared gestational age patterns and timing of home and hospital births in three high-income countries with differing maternity care models: the US, which heavily relies on obstetricians and clinical interventions, and England and the Netherlands, which primarily use midwives for low-intervention care.
The findings show that the average length of US pregnancies steadily declined by more than half a week between 1990 and 2020, from 39.1 weeks to 38.5 weeks, and that US pregnancies, on average, are shorter than pregnancies in England and the Netherlands. In 2020, only 23 percent of US births occurred at 40 or more weeks, compared with 44 percent of births in the Netherlands and 40 percent of births in England. The gestational age pattern for home births was the same in all three countries.
Timing of Births in Home vs. Hospital Settings
In all three countries, the researchers also examined birth timing by hour of the day for home and vaginal births at the hospital, and then repeated this analysis, limiting the comparison to hospital-based vaginal births without interventions such as induction or labor augmentation that could possibly alter the timing.
In England and the Netherlands, births at home and at the hospital occurred at similar times of the day, peaking in the early morning hours between 1 a.m.-6 a.m.
But in the US, there was a noticeable difference in birth timing between the two settings: births at home peaked in the same early morning hours as home births in other countries. By contrast, hospital-based births—even those with no interventions that could affect the natural pattern of timing—largely occurred during standard working hours for clinical staff, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Implications for Maternity Care Models
The paper is the first international study using large datasets to compare gestational age and birth timing in three high-income countries; most prior research has focused on data from individual hospitals or countries. Given England’s and the Netherlands’s superior birthing outcomes, the authors say their findings suggest the US maternity care models could benefit from an organizational shift that places less emphasis on active, clinical management of labor and allows the birthing process to take a natural course.
“Our multi-country analysis shows that the US is an outlier in gestational age distribution and timing of low-intervention hospital births,” says study lead and corresponding author Dr. Eugene Declercq, professor of community health sciences at BUSPH. “There’s a lesson to be learned from countries with more positive maternity outcomes than the US in having hospital staffing and operational plans conform more closely to the natural patterns of birth timing and gestational age rather than try to have birth timing fit organizational needs.”
The study included nationally representative and publicly available population-based birth data from all three countries, including data on more than 3.8 million births in the US and 156,000 births in the Netherlands in 2014, and more than 56,000 births in England from 2008-2010. The researchers examined home and hospital birth timing for births that occurred between 37 and 42 weeks.
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it gets,” says study senior author Dr. Neel Shah, chief medical officer of Maven Clinic and a visiting scientist at BIDMC. “The alarmingly poor results of the US maternal health system demand greater attention to its design. Our study shows that in comparison with other high-income countries, American hospitals may be designed to center the convenience of clinicians more than the needs of people giving birth.”
Reference: “The natural pattern of birth timing and gestational age in the U.S. compared to England, and the Netherlands” by Eugene Declercq, Anneke Wolterink, Rachel Rowe, Ank de Jonge, Raymond De Vries, Marianne Nieuwenhuijze, Corine Verhoeven and Neel Shah, 18 January 2023, PLOS ONE.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0278856
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