Does labor always start at night?! Why?!

[Anonymous]

#1 wee hours of the morning, but slowly picked up during the day and baby born around 4am next morning

#2 induced

#3 evening, baby born around 6am (shorter labor but nurse ignored me until the shift changed since she didn't want to deliver a baby)

[Anonymous]

It was maybe 4 am, but contractions were far apart and I slept for two more hours before saying anything. Second birth was induced so I don’t know.

[Anonymous]

Nope. First baby: 7 pm.
Second baby i really felt start at 2 pm but i now realize i had real mild contractions from like 10 and just thought Braxton hicks and went shopping and to lunch. Lol

[Anonymous]

Water broke at 11pm both times. Baby born by 6am both times.

[Anonymous]

#1 - 11:30pm
#2 - 4 pm after waking from a nap
#3 - 2am

[Anonymous]

I asked my midwife this and she said its evolutionary to protect laboring mom from predators

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I asked my midwife this and she said its evolutionary to protect laboring mom from predators

That’s pretty cool.

[Anonymous]

Both mine started at like 3am. First took 28 hours to actually have baby, second I went to hospital and had pitocin and baby was out by 10am. My goal was to be able to go home after 1 night and to do that I had to have baby before noon. Also long labors are for the birds - you’re exhausted and lacking sleep before you even have the baby

[Anonymous]

I was thinking the same, although one of mine started first thing in the morning. I still consider it partial nighttime I guess... nothing in the middle of the day

[Anonymous]

No. I was at work and my water broke. I think it was 3 pm.

[Anonymous]

My labor started at 2am. Mom says that one of her labors started late in the evening (like 10 or 11 pm) and one in the middle of the night.


Also anecdotal, an aunt lives on a small hobby farm. It seems like the goats and sheep almost always start labor overnight. We come out in the morning to find a lamb/kid, with mama laboring to deliver #2. I've only seen them start labor mid-day a couple of times - it does happen, but nowhere near as often.

[Anonymous]

Not always. My mother started laboring in the AM after she woke up (?~11am) and I was born in the afternoon.

But there is a study that looked at this: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0198183 and found that for spontaneous births, nighttime labor/births are more common.

Just over half of all births in our data set are spontaneous births following spontaneous onset of labour. These have a roughly sinusoidal pattern, and are most likely to occur between 1:00 and 7:00, with a peak around 4:00, and a trough in the afternoon.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of times you are in labor but you don't realize it until you can't sleep or are awoken in the night because the pain had intensified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, it seems that labor always starts at night. Why is this?

When did your labor start?

There is an old wives tale that babies are born the same time they are conceived, which is why so many are born at night.

[Anonymous]

4:30 am
9 am
8 pm

All different times for me.