Answer a few questions. We will show you what happened to women who gave the same answers, out of 31.4 million US hospital births.
Ask a pregnant woman what her chance of a cesarean is. Then ask her obstetrician. Most of the time you get the same answer from both: about 32 in 100, because that is the United States rate.
That number is correct, and it is the wrong answer. Thirty-two in a hundred is the average of every pregnancy in the country at once — first babies and fifth babies, one baby and twins, 24 weeks and 42 weeks, head down and breech, a woman going into labor for the first time and a woman booked for a repeat operation. Almost nobody is the average.
| Third or later baby, no previous cesarean, one baby, head down, at term, labor starting on its own | 11 in 100 | |
| Second baby, otherwise the same | 13 in 100 | |
| First baby, one baby, head down, 39–40 weeks, labor starting on its own | 24 in 100 | |
| Every US birth added together — the “32 per cent” | 32 in 100 | |
| A previous cesarean, one baby, head down, 39–40 weeks | 86 in 100 | |
| Breech, one baby, at term | 96 in 100 |
Eleven in a hundred to ninety-six in a hundred. Every one of those is a real count from the same data as the 32. That is the whole point of this tool: eight questions, and you get the number for women whose records looked like yours instead of the number for everybody.
This tool counts what was written on United States birth certificates between 2016 and 2024 — 31,384,803 hospital pregnancies delivered from 22 weeks onwards. It shows how often women whose records matched your answers had a cesarean. A twin pregnancy is counted once.
It is not a prediction about you. It cannot know your health, your baby, your hospital or your doctor, and those matter a great deal. Use it to have a better conversation with your midwife or doctor, not instead of one.
It also cannot tell you what causes anything. If one group has more cesareans than another, this tool cannot tell you whether that is because of something that was done, or because of the reason it was done.
Every figure is computed from the National Center for Health Statistics natality public use files — the anonymous record of every birth certificate filed in the United States. Nine annual files, 2016 through 2024, read directly from the source rather than copied out of any summary table. Nothing is modelled, fitted, smoothed or predicted: each number is one count divided by another.
Two items on the certificate are weaker than the rest. Whether labor was induced, and whether labor was attempted before a cesarean, are tick boxes filled in differently from state to state. Read the split between “before labor” and “after labor began” as a good guide rather than an exact figure.
Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The whole tool runs inside this page, on your own device.
Know your obstetrics? There is a second door into the same data: the twelve Robson groups →
Remember: this is a count of what happened to women whose records matched your answers, not a prediction about you. It cannot know your health, your baby, your hospital or your doctor. Read the full notes again →