Will a 3rd Child Come Sooner Than His Siblings?

I’m pregnant with my third child. Is it likely that I will have him earlier or quicker than my last?”

A study an international obstetrics journal that tracked about 6,700 women for 10 years found that women have a “highly significant tendency to have pregnancies of similar gestational length.”

In other words, what’s most likely that this pregnancy will last about as long as the other two did. But the good news is that labor after the first baby is typically a whole lot shorter. For a first baby, the average length of the first stage of labor is 12 to 14 hours, the second stage (pushing) is one to 2 hours and the third stage (delivering the afterbirth) lasts from five minutes to an hour. But women expecting a second (or third or fourth) baby can expect the first stage to last around six to eight hours, and the second stage from 5 to 60 minutes. But, of course, averages are only averages and every pregnancy is different!