A new study has revealed that a father’s genes can delay baby’s birth, thus increase a woman’s risk of a lengthy pregnancy by 30 per cent.
The researchers analysing late births in pregnant women found that women who had an unusually long first pregnancy, were less likely to have a second long pregnancy if the second baby had a different father, according to a report published in British Medical Journal.
This shows, says Annette Wind Olesen at the University of Aarhus, that a father’s genes partly determine the timing of his child’s birth. “It was very exciting to find out that there was a difference between fathers,” she says.
The team is the first to investigate the role of the father in long pregnancies, which they defined as longer than 42 weeks.
ANI