Adding just a few more weeks of pregnancy can cut a newborn’s risk of death in half -- even if the pregnancy has reached “term” -- adding more evidence to the argument that continuing a pregnancy to at least 39 weeks is crucial to a baby’s health. The research by a team of investigators from the March of Dimes, the National Institutes of Health and the US Food and Drug Administration found that although the overall risk of death is small, it more than doubles for infants born at 37 weeks of pregnancy, when compared to babies born at 40 weeks, for all races and ethnicities.
