The natural pattern of birth timing and gestational age in the U.S. compared to England, and the Netherlands

Objective To examine cross-national differences in gestational age over time in the U.S. and across three wealthy countries in 2020 as well as examine patterns of birth timing by hour of the day in home and spontaneous vaginal hospital births in the three countries. Methods We did a comparative cohort analysis with data on gestational age and the timing of birth from the United States, England and the Netherlands, comparing hospital and home births. For overall gestational age comparisons, we drew on national birth cohorts from the U.S. (1990, 2014 & 2020), the Netherlands (2014 & 2020... Mehr ...