Most people don’t know, but there are over 4 million babies being born on average in the United States annually. At least as of 2007… that is a lot of babies, hospital beds, and statistics which are fun to look over and analyze.

In the past couple weeks I have been looking through all the statistics and information and picking out what I find most interesting, or unique, just to share with all my great readers.

Some are shocking, some aren’t… some are fascinating, and some of you may know these already, but here goes nothing!
1. The most popular day of the week for babies to be born is Wednesday, although it used to be Tuesday. Not surprising for me because my oldest son was born by c-section after a scheduled induction on Tuesday  The least likely day for a baby to be born on is Sunday.
2. The state of Utah has the highest birth rate in the country averaging 21 babies per 1,000 people.
3. More teens are having babies… The teen birth rate has increased 3% on 2006 and has continued to steadily increase since. This was after a 45% decrease from 1990 to 2005.
4. Fewer women are getting proper prenatal care. From 1990 to 2003 the number of women who got proper prenatal care increased annually, and remained steady. In 2006 the number started to decline. There is a lot of speculation as to why this happened, but many believe the changes in the economy, and lack of access to insurance coverage is one of the biggest factors.
5. 13.2% of mothers smoked during pregnancy in 2006.   Despite recommendations that mothers do not smoke because of the risks to their unborn baby, which now include serious heart defects.
6. Doctors remain the top choice for women. In 2006 99% of women gave birth in hospitals, 91.5% of those women did so with OB/GYN’s and the remaining 8% of women in hospitals birthed with Midwives.  This number is up from less than 1% in the 1970′s, and seems to continue to increase.
7. Out of hospital births are slowly increasing, but not by much. Out of hospital means free standing birth centers, or home births. 65% of the out of hospital births took place at home, and 28% were in the free standing birth centers.  With a further breakdown of these births, it shows that Midwives attend 61% of home births, and OB/GYN’s attend 7.6% of these births. In total for 2006, 38,568 took place outside of the hospital.
8. Boys outnumber girls!  I am not surprised since my family is totally outnumbered by boys also! 1,049 male babies are born for every 1,000 female babies in 2006, which seems to be how it has been for the past 60 years.
9. C-Sections continue to climb. C-sections climbed in  2006  to 31.1 percent of all births, a 3 percent rise from 2005 and another record high. The c-section rate has climbed 50 percent in the United States over the last decade.  And continue to increase annually despite the various medical organizations trying to slow and reverse the trend.
10. Induction is getting way more popular!  The number of women whose labor is induced has more than doubled since 1990. In 2006, it rose 1 percent above the previous year, to roughly 22.5%  of births. Sixteen percent of preterm and 24 percent of term and higher deliveries were induced in 2006.
photo: flickr.com/ MJ/TR (´･ω･)

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