Why most women give birth at night and early morning

Despite that birth plan you've lovingly put together, your child's grand entrance into the world is often something you have very little control over.

But there may be one aspect of their arrival which you can guess, or at least accurately estimate it.

This is the time your baby is born.

To the very minute, the time of your bundle of joy's birth is a time you'll remember for the rest of your life.

There's also strong evidence suggesting that a lot of babies have a habit of arriving at a very specific time.

Research conducted over a ten year period by the City University of London, in collaboration with University College London and the NCT found the most common time to give birth is...4am.

They arrived at this figure by analysing over five million births.

As for why, it's not a case of "start as you mean to go on" with those sleepless nights.

Instead, there's an important evolutionary reason behind it. Explaining why this time is so common, Lead researcher Dr. Peter Martin said :

"Our ancestors lived in groups that were active and dispersed during the day and came together to rest at night.

"So a night-time labour and birth probably afforded the mother and newborn baby some protection."

The comprehensive research also reveals that 71.5 per cent of births take place outside of the regular working day; between 1am and 6:59am on weekends, public holidays, or between 5pm – 8:59am on non-holiday weekdays.

Interestingly, the majority of these were spontaneous labour.

"Long-term experience and research from other areas has shown that human births without obstetric intervention are most likely to occur at night or in the early hours of the morning."