Over the weekend, The New York Times published an article that we consider the most important pregnancy-related story of the year (so far). If you haven’t read it, read it–and and pass it along to pregnant friends.
The gist: the heavier a baby at birth (up to 10 lbs), the better that child is likely is to score on tests and fare in school. If you’d like to read the entire story, click here.
The study looked at all babies born in Florida over an 11 year period and tracked them as they aged. It challenges the long-held belief that once a fetus hits a certain point–39 weeks of gestation and 5.5 lbs in weight—it’s as cooked as it needs to be and that any additional time in the womb will only serve to complicate the delivery.
The Times story, based on a soon-to-be-published article in the prestigious American Economic Review, revealed these key points:
- Many fetuses benefit by longer stays in the womb.
- Babies who were heavier at birth scored higher on kindergarten readiness as well as math and reading tests from grades 3-8.
- The relationship between birth weight and test scores was present by the time the children enrolled in Kindergarten and continued fairly consistently throughout elementary and middle school. (Other research has shown that children who do better in elementary school are more likely to graduate from college, live longer and earn a better living than those who don’t.)
- The chunkier the baby, the better it does on average, up to 10 lbs. Nine-lb babies tend to be healthier and fare better in school than 8-lb babies; 8-lb-ers tend to fare better than 7-lb cohorts, and so on.
- A baby born at 10 lbs, an author of the study tells the Times, will score 5 percent higher (or about 80 points) on the 1,600 point SAT than a fellow test taker who was born at 6 lbs.
- Among the top 5 percent of test takers in elementary school, one in three weighted at least 8 lbsat birth v. only one in four of all babies.
- Birth weight doesn’t determine one’s future. Smaller babies of well-educated parents are likely to do better than heavier babies whose parents don’t complete high-school.
- The study authors do not rule out the possibility that weight is a proxy for other aspects of fetal health.
Many inductions and C-sections today are elective rather than coming after a woman’s water has broken. In fact, about half of all U.S. births in the US are brought about by drugs or surgery—double the number in 1990, according to The New York Times article. In 2011, groups including the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists began pushing to eliminate the practice of encouraging labor before the 39th week unless there was a clear medical reason.
Researchers now agree that non-medical inductions before the 39th week are a problem. Many doctors, however, may be skeptical of the study’s findings and therefore resist changing their delivery practices. One doctor quoted in the article said she would want to ensure that unobserved health problems, including those unconnected to genes or fetal conditions, were not causing lower birth weights and cognitive gaps.
