When babies grace the world with their new presence, they’re not watching the clock for the right moment to emerge — or are they? A new study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found fetuses time their births at a surprisingly similar rate to the rest of the babies in America.

While it’s entertaining to imagine a tiny little human crowning with a small wrist watch as if trying to make a special daytime appearance, it may have more to do with the wake-sleep cycle set by mom. After analyzing the National Vital Statistics System’s birth certificates from 2013, the CDC found a common trend — more babies were born between 8:00 a.m. and noon, while less than three percent of babies were born between midnight and 6:59 a.m.

The story changes for the weekend. If you’re a pregnant woman who finds herself in the delivery room on a Saturday or Sunday wondering when the baby is going to breach, chances are it’ll happen late evening or overnight between 11:00 p.m. and 5:59 a.m. If the doctors didn’t need to induce the woman to help things along, a vaginal birth is more likely to happen in the early morning compared to induced vaginal births and cesareans.

“As the use of medical interventions for childbirth (i.e., induction of labor and cesarean delivery) has increased during the last few decades, an increasing proportion of deliveries occur during regular daytime hours,” the authors of the study wrote.

In 2003, a Swedish study found babies born between 5:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. were less likely to survive past the first 28 days after birth. Throughout the country, 27,970 babies born in 2002 died within their first year of life. Of those babies, 67.2 percent died in the first month, according to the findings. Another study published two years later in the journal of Obstetrics Gynecology, confirmed the timing of birth can be used as an indicator to predict neonatal death. While even the thought of losing a baby is devastating for most mothers, it’s important hospitals are away of the trends in order to be a step ahead of the baby before it’s born — ultimately improving the safeness of the delivery.

But what happens if you don’t make it to the hospital in time? If you’re going for the more holistic approach with a bathtub birth or the baby surprised you and you’re stuck giving birth where you are, it’s 90 percent more likely to happen in the early morning hours of 1:00 a.m to 4:59 a.m. However, researchers found 98 percent of deliveries occured in hospitals.

Tuesdays are the most popular birth days for infant newcomers, followed by Monday, according to the study. The findings add to a growing body of birthing patterns, which researchers predict will help hospitals in the future to better staff. By knowing the likelihood of what time a mother will give birth and what type of birth at the time, hospital staff will be able to increase the rate of healthy and safe births for mom and newborn.

Source: Mathews TJ and Curtin SC. When Are Babies Born: Morning, Noon, or Night? Birth Certificate Data for 2013. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2015.