The average woman in Egypt only stays in the hospital for half a day after giving birth.
A typical woman in Ukraine, meanwhile, stays just over six days.
A new study published in PLOS Medicine March 8 documents the average time new mothers stay in the hospital after giving birth in 71 different countries.
The US is on the low end of the spectrum, with women only staying in the hospital for two days on average.
The researchers used the most recent data, but it spans from 2005 to 2013, depending on what was available for each country. And it only accounts for women who gave birth vaginally (not via C-section) to singletons (rather than twins or triplets).
Here's a look at a selection of 20 of the countries they analyzed (you can see the full list in a graphic from the study).
The average stay for a new mother in the US has gotten shorter since 1970, when mothers stayed in the hospital twice as long at 4.1 days.
A report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed this decrease to the rise in health care costs over that same time frame. People just couldn't afford to stay in the hospital that long anymore.
To keep the average from dipping any lower, Congress passed the Newborns' and Mothers' Health Protection Act in 1996. That requires health insurers to cover at least 48 hours for uncomplicated vaginal deliveries and 96 hours for Cesarean sections.
The World Health Organization recommends that women who have uncomplicated vaginal deliveries stay in the hospital for at least 24 hours after birth.
The first 24 hours after birth are critical for monitoring both the baby's and the mother's health. If women stay for less than a day, they could be at higher risk for complications.
Women should typically stay longer after C-sections since they have to recover from major surgery. About one in three American women get C-sections, and they typically stay about four days, according to the US Office of Women's Health.
"Substantial proportions of women stay too short following childbirth to allow for adequate postnatal care," the authors of the PLOS Medicine study concluded.
"Globally, women are encouraged to deliver in facilities in the first instance because this is the easiest place to provide skilled birth attendance and evidence-based postnatal care adhering to minimal global standards. Ensuring that such care is available, and that women and their newborns stay long enough to receive it, is essential."