When Will Your Baby Be Born?

I imagine a lot of first time moms (FTM) google things like:
"When will my baby be born?""How close to your due date did you deliver baby #1?""What is the average week women go into labor?""What is the average due date for FTM?""How many FTM go past their due date?"
Maybe it's just me. But I literally searched and searched for the answers to the above questions. I found a ton of articles stating that even though most people tell first time moms that they will go a week or so past their due date, this isn't actually true. When I saw that, I had a glimmer of hope.
I mean, let's be real - who wants to be 42 weeks pregnant? Yes, we want our little ones to "bake" as long as they need to, but if my baby is done at 39.5 weeks, I would much rather have her come out! After watching a bunch of friends over the past few weeks go over their due date, I became determined to get some REAL statistics on how likely it will be that I will face the same fate.
So I sent out a call to all moms out there. I asked them to submit the statistics of the birth of their first children. I wanted to make sure this data only included first time births so that I could uncover whether or not it is true that the majority of FTM go past their due dates.
I collected information from a total of 162 moms. What I found was extremely surprising, and encouraging I might add. Below I will go through the charts that show all of the data.


Above is the first chart. This shows the weeks that babies to first time moms were delivered. The exact numbers are as follows:
35 weeks: 136 weeks: 437 weeks: 1438 weeks: 3339 weeks: 38Due Date: 1440+ weeks: 58
So by just looking at those numbers it looks like a huge amount of women did, in fact, give birth past their due date. But in reality, that is not the case.


If you look at this chart, where the numbers are represented by percentages, you see that only 36% of first time moms actually gave birth "late". That means that 104 out of the 162 moms gave birth on or before their due date. 71 out of those 104 gave birth during their 38th and 39th week of pregnancy. 
Now, you have to take into consideration that these numbers include women who were induced. So how many of the 162 first time moms were induced?


Now, I want to do everything in my power to avoid being induced. I didn't know until my doctor appointment yesterday that many states will allow you to be induced any time after 37 weeks "electively". In high altitude states like Colorado, the earliest you can induce out of convenience is 39 weeks because they were finding that most babies induced before then needed oxygen due to how high we are. Well, that kind of threw a wrench into my data collecting. I didn't ask moms to explain to me why they were induced. Was it medically necessary or out of convenience? This led me to expand on all these charts and data.
For now, this chart above shows how many FTM's had to be induced for their births. 97 out of the 162 went into labor naturally.
Lastly, I wanted to know how often women end up having a c-section.


Thankfully, from this data it seems that it isn't as likely as I thought. Only 42 out of the 162 moms ended up with a c-section. That means that 120 delivered vaginally.
So all of these charts are well and good, but I noticed they didn't give an honest representation of what I was originally going after. Like I said earlier, women who were induced kind of "mess up" the data. Usually women who are induced are either induced early because of medical issues or are induced late because the baby just won't come out! I know there are some that choose to induce for other reasons, but since I can't decipher between all the different circumstances, I really wanted to look at the data excluding the moms who had inductions.
I wanted to know, "If mother nature was to take it's course with as little intervention as possible, when would my baby be born?"
I was scared that removing the inductions would tip the numbers towards the theory that I am doomed to be "late"...


Well looky there. I discovered there was still a nice spread of births across the chart when induction was removed. 97 moms total were not induced. The births per week are as follows:
35 weeks: 136 weeks: 137 weeks: 838 weeks: 2839 weeks: 22Due Date: 1040+ weeks: 27
So what does this look like in terms of percentages?


You'll be happy to see that this still shows that the majority of FTM's do not go past their due date! 70 out of the 97 moms delivered on or before their due date. 50 of those births occurred between the 38th and 39th week of pregnancy.
So if you aren't induced, what is the likelihood of ending up with a c-section?


This data surprised me. I thought that you would be a lot more likely to have a c-section if you induced labor. I mean, if your body wasn't planning on going into labor, it would make sense that more issues would have a chance of coming up, preventing you from delivering vaginally.
What you see instead is that the percentage is only slightly higher for c-section when you are induced - 26% compared to the 21% you see above.
Of FTM's who were not induced, 77 out of the 97 were able to give birth vaginally. This gave me peace of mind and encouraged me that a lot less c-sections take place than I imagined. For the data I collected, 1 in 5 moms had a c-section if they were not induced, while 1 in 4 had one if they were induced.
So what does all of this mean?
Well, I realize that this only included stories from 162 moms. Some may argue that to be more accurate you would need thousands of participants. But I collected this data randomly and from mom bloggers all over the world.
After looking at all the numbers provided, I was pleasantly surprised. It matched up with the scientific research I had read that stated that FTM are not more likely to go past their due date. There are a lot of factors that play into when your baby comes (age, weight, health, etc), but just because it's your first baby, it doesn't mean you will go until week 42.
I hope this encouraged you as much as it did me! So the countdown continues for millions of moms....
When will your baby be born?