Do you know the most common reason people are hospitalized?  No, it’s not a heart attack. It’s not pneumonia.

It’s childbirth!

Every year in the United States, about 4 million babies are born—most of those in hospitals.

The goal of every hospital is to send mother and baby home healthy and happy. In fact, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee created an award designation (the Blue Distinction Center for Maternity Care) to indicate those hospitals in their area that exceed expectations when it comes to taking care of new moms and their babies.

The program evaluates a hospital’s quality on several things, including how many babies are delivered by cesarean section before 39 weeks gestation for no medical reason.

Can anyone say, “My favorite OB will be vacationing in Aruba on my due date! Induce me now!”?

One of the main reasons why keeping the bun in the oven until 39 weeks is so important is neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). Some of the risk factors that lead to RDS, other than early delivery that’s not medically necessary, include:

• Genetic predisposition—if other people in the pregnant couple’s families have had RDS, they may have a mutation in a gene associated with surfactant
• Pregnancy that involves multiple fetuses (twins, triplets)
• Problems during childbirth that affect blood flow to the baby
• Delivery by cesarean section—delivering vaginally can help prepare the baby’s lungs to move from being fluid-filled in the womb to breathing air
• The mother having diabetes

Most babies who develop RDS show signs of breathing problems at birth or within the first few hours, and it’s more common in infants born 6 weeks or more before their term dates.

RDS rarely occurs in full-term infants.

A preemie’s lungs aren’t able to make enough surfactant, a liquid that coats the inside of the lungs and helps keep the lungs open so that infants can breathe in air once they’re born. Without enough surfactant, the lungs collapse and the infant has to work very hard just to breathe, and that lack of oxygen can damage the baby’s brain and other organs.

Treating these tiny babies and their even tinier lungs is a delicate and imperfect process.

It’s normal for RDS to get worse for 2 to 4 days after birth and improvement after that is generally slow and fraught with complications. So, doing everything one can to prevent early delivery is essential.

Options for Minimizing the Risk of RDS:

• Good prenatal care and regular checkups from the moment a woman discovers she’s pregnant go a long way to preventing premature deliveries
• If the birth must be induced because the the mother or her baby are in distress, the baby’s lungs can be tested in utero to see if they’re sufficiently developed; if able, doctors will delay the delivery as long as possible
• Moms who are at risk of delivering prematurely may be given corticosteroids  during weeks 24 and 34 of their pregnancy, to try to speed up the baby’s lung development

RDS is a terrifying thing for new parents; it’s important for them to seek out care and support.

Graham’s Foundation is one organization you might look into (click here). There’s also an article on the What to Expect website that can give you even more ideas!

Know any other RDS or pregnancy resources? Share them in the comments!