Increased risk of learning disabilities to babies born only 1 week early

[DoulaYvonne]

I copied and pasted, I'm going to try to find the original source link.

What do you think of this???



Increased risk of learning disabilities to babies born only 1 week early

18 Jun 2010

A Scottish study has found that babies born at 39 weeks gestation have an
increased risk of developing learning disabilities such as autism and
dyslexia than babies born at 40 weeks. It has long been known that babies
born prematurely are at greater risk of impaired development but this recent
analysis of the birth history of over 400,000 school children shows that
even just one week can make a difference. Some women go into labour
naturally before 40 weeks gestation but most caesareans are performed
between 37 and 39 weeks and are not always a medical necessity. This study
shows clearly that the risks and benefits of performing an elective
caesarean before term need to be understood and weighed up carefully.
Because more babies are born early term rather than preterm the numbers of
those born early term with learning difficulties in the study was higher at
5.5% compared to only 3.6% at preterm.

MacKay DF, Smith GCS, Dobbie R, Pell JP (2010) Gestational Age at Delivery
and Special Educational Need: Retrospective Cohort Study of 407,503
Schoolchildren. PLoS Med 7(6): e1000289. doi:10.1371/ journal.pmed. 1000289

[LeighB]

This is interesting because I just read an article abut Pitocin associated with learning disabilities and autism.

[MichelleS]

If you can find the original article, please link to it.

I think this is a great resource to give out to mothers who are on the fence about early inductions, c-secs, etc.

[Doulamoon]

You could say it's like the MMR vacsination and autisi
it can be inconclusive,
but it is important the research should be assessed to see what if any links might be there.

[laur318]

So glad it's finally in a published study. That makes me glad, for every time I advised a woman to really look into her options.

[JennTheMomma]

Is this for babies who were born 1 week early that was induced or c-sectioned? Or just babies born 1 week early in general. Because my second son was born at 39 weeks, but all on his own. No induction, natural or otherwise. Water broke at 1 am, contractions started at about 3 am, and he was born 1:50 am the next day at home. My first was born at 41 weeks, no induction natural or otherwise, but cascade of interventions (pitocin, AROM, nubain and epidural) and has ADHD at 3 years old.