Study Finds “Late Term Babies” Do Better In School

Researchers have found that “late term babies” do better in their school.

The study carried out by Northwestern University found children who are born during the 41st week of pregnancy tended to have better test scores and be classified as gifted students in primary school than children who were born at 39 or 40 weeks.

The researchers said that their findings suggest that while 40 weeks remains the safest time for most babies to be delivered, if a pregnancy is uncomplicated, there can be beneficial effects of going another week.

According to the lead researcher, Dr David Figlio, it had perviously been established that late term births were associated with higher levels of neonatal health problems. But limitations in data meant that researchers had no way of knowing if those problems persisted in life, or if there were potential benefits to late term births.

He said the new study “shows not only that children born in late term continue to have an elevated risk of health problems when school-aged, but also that they have an elevated rate of cognitive benefits.”

The late term infants were 2.8% more likely to be classified as gifted and 3.1% less likely to have poor cognitive outcomes compared with full-term infants.

However, even though children born late are more likely to be more intelligent, they are also at greater risk of physical disability. Late term infants were 2.1% more likely to be classified with a physical disability requiring special classroom accommodation.

“These findings suggest there may be a trade off between physical and cognitive outcomes, associated with late-term gestation,” Dr Figlio said.

“While late-term gestation was associated with an increase in the rate of abnormal conditions at birth and with worse physical outcomes during childhood, it was also associated with better performance on all three measures of school-based cognitive functioning measures during childhood,” he said.

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