NHS Maternity Statistics, England - 2020-21

This section reports characteristics of and associated activity occurring to the baby following delivery. HES data contains some basic information about the baby at delivery, such as the method of delivery but MSDS contains more granular data for each birth.

Due to partial coverage of activity reported to the MSDS both geographically and over time during 2020-21 it is advised that the following figures should be described in terms of all submitters to the MSDS rather than England level figures.

A baby born at 37 weeks gestation or later is known as a ‘term’ baby. Babies born before 37 weeks gestation are known as 'preterm' babies and may be less healthy and require additional care. So that data at maternity service provider level is not influenced by the proportion of preterm babies that they deliver, many measures of health and outcomes for newborn infants are produced only for term babies. In this report the proportion of babies by Apgar score, and the proportion of mothers that had skin-to-skin-contact relate only to term births, while the proportion of babies by first feed type relates to all births.

Of babies with a recorded birthweight at delivery, 7 per cent had a low birthweight that was less than 2.5kg, and 1 per cent reported as weighing under 1.5kg at time of delivery.

Of the term babies with an Apgar score recorded, 1.4 per cent had a score below seven.

74.7 per cent of babies born at 37 weeks gestation or more had skin-to-skin contact within 1 hour of birth.

Of the babies submitted to the MSDS with a recorded feed type, 72.7 per cent received breast milk for their first feed.