Women spend more time in labour now than 50 yrs ago

Washington, Mar 31 (ANI): Today's women take longer to give birth as compared to women 50 years ago, a new study has revealed.

The researchers, from the National Institutes of Health who analysed nearly 140,000 deliveries, could not identify all of the factors that accounted for the increase, but concluded that the change is likely due to changes in delivery room practice.

For the study, they compared data on deliveries in the early 1960s to data gathered in the early 2000s.

They found that the first stage of labour had increased by 2.6 hours for first-time mothers. For women who had previously given birth, this early stage of labour took two hours longer in recent years than for women in the 1960s.

The first stage of labour is the stage during which the cervix dilates, before active pushing begins.

Infants born in the contemporary group also were born five days earlier, on average, than were those born in the 1960s, and tended to weigh more. The women in the contemporary group tended to weigh more than did those who delivered in the 1960s.

For the contemporary group, the average body mass index before pregnancy was 24.9, compared with 23 for the earlier generation. Body mass index is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.

At the time they gave birth, the mothers in the contemporary group were about four years older, on average, than those in the group who gave birth in the 1960s.

"Older mothers tend to take longer to give birth than do younger mothers," S. Katherine Laughon, lead author of the study, said.

"But when we take maternal age into account, it doesn't completely explain the difference in labour times," she said.

Among the change in delivery practice the researchers found was an increase in the use of epidural anesthesia, the injection of pain killers into the spinal fluid, to decrease the pain of labour.

For the contemporary group, epidural injections were used in more than half of recent deliveries, compared with 4 percent of deliveries in the 1960s.

The study authors noted that epidural anesthesia is known to increase delivery time, but said it doesn't account for all of the increase.

Doctors in the early 2000s also administered the hormone oxytocin more frequently (in 31 percent of deliveries, compared with 12 percent in the 1960s), the researchers found. Oxytocin is given to speed up labour, often when contractions seem to have slowed. Its use should be expected to shorten labour times, Laughon explained.

"Without it, labour might even be longer in current obstetrics than what we found," she said.

The study has been published online in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. (ANI)