If you believe old wives tales, then the full moon sure has a big effect on your body. Folklore tells us that the full moon correlates to more emergency room visits, poorer mental health, a change in menstrual cycle, and sleep deprivation, among other phenomenon.
Like many of these myths, the idea that a full moon induces labor has pretty much been disproven. Still, many people seem to believe it. Just last year a woman told us that she believed her son was born six weeks early in part because of the full moon.
The moon was completely full last night, July 9, but we can pretty much guarantee that there weren't any more people populating the delivery room than there would have been on any other night.
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In case you need more convincing, Scientific American recently rounded up statistics about when babies are born most often. Turns out, there's a big spike of births that happen around 8 o'clock in the morning, but no correlation whatsoever with the full moon. And based on previous research, scientists at Duke University say that this bit of legend is definitely a myth.
So, now that we've got that out of the way, we bet you're wondering why more babies are born so early in the morning. Rest assured, there isn't anything magical about that, either.
Zan Armstrong, the data visualisation engineer who gathered these statistics, said that the spike makes a lot of sense when you break the data down into the types of births, like c-sections, induced births, and natural births.
Scheduled c-sections account for the big spike at 8 a.m., since doctors plan for births like these during daytime hours. There's another spike of c-sections around noon, according to the data, and a big drop later in the day and into the night.
It makes sense — if doctors are going to schedule a birth, then of course they would do it during work hours and leave the nights to emergency c-sections and natural births (none of which are influenced by the moon).
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