FHI: Doubling in the proportion of initiated births in the last 20 years

The purpose of initiating labor after the due date has passed is to avoid fetal deaths, writes The Institute of Public Health (FHI).

The proportion that is started after gestational week 40, which is the term, has risen from 15.2 per cent in the period 2004–2009 to 28.1 per cent in the period 2019–2023.

– In Norway, there are close to 8,000 women who pass week 41 and go into labor on their own. If these 8,000 women had also been initiated, more than 40 percent of all pregnancies in Norway would have been initiated, says researcher and senior physician Ferenc Macsali at FHI.

Consideration for mother and child

In some pregnancies, there is also a need to initiate labor before the body itself is ready for it, for the sake of the mother or the child.

Women with pre-eclampsia, diabetes or other illness should be started already before the due date, according to national guidelines. This also applies to pregnancies where the fetus does not grow as expected.

At the same time, more initiated births could lead to more caesarean sections or operative vaginal deliveries. There is also a larger proportion who experience greater bleeding.

– If more women are to be initiated than the guidelines require today, it will also lead to a greater workload for already pressured maternity wards, says Macsali.

The age of first-time mothers does not increase

For the first time in a long time, however, the age of first-time mothers is not increasing in Norway. The average age last year remained at 30.2 years, the same as in 2022.

– The age of first-time mothers has increased slightly every year for the past 14 years. The fact that it does not rise this year is positive, says senior physician Liv Cecilie Vestrheim Thomsen i FHI.

The overall average age for all women who give birth continues to rise, and last year it was 31.8 years.

– The increase in age seen among all those who give birth in total is due to the fact that multiple births are getting older. That means we are older when we have two, three or four children, says Vestrheim Thomsen.

Fewer twins

There are also fewer women who have given birth to twins in Norway in the last 20 years. Last year, 715 women gave birth to twins, which is only 1.4 per cent of all births in Norway.

Especially in Møre and Romsdal, in Western Norway and in Nordland, twin births are falling, where 40 per cent fewer twins were born last year than ten years ago.

According to FHI, this is probably due to a decrease in the number of people who give birth to twins after assisted fertilization (test tube experiments). Where previously two or more eggs were inserted to increase the chance of the woman becoming pregnant, in recent years only one has been inserted.