What Happens When A Baby Is Born Late?
There is no way of being absolutely sure when a pregnancy has lasted precisely days, because there is no way of being absolutely sure of the moment of conception.
This is why doctors and midwives are so careful to explain when working out the expected date of delivery (EDD) that two weeks on either side can be normal .
However, when a pregnancy has gone on for more than 14 days after the EDD, and the baby has been of the expected size during the months of pregnancy, the doctors consider the possibility of post maturity.
If however the baby’s size has always been ‘small for dates’ then he is probably not post mature; there has just been confusion about the date of the mother’s last menstrual period.
If the baby remains in the uterus too long instead of continuing to grow he actually loses weight.This could be because the placenta, now it is ageing, can no longer provide adequate nourishment, and the baby begins to live on the fat he has stored under his skin.
By about the forty-second or forty-third week of pregnancy he may be quite scraggy. Babies born at this stage are thin, look wrinkled and have long fingernails and peeling skin. All these signs indicate post maturity.
What Happens In Labor
Labor has been well named, because it is hard work. The baby who was just two tiny cells has grown in 40 weeks to be a 20 inch (51 centimeters) long, seven pound (3.3 kilogram’s) person of a far from symmetrical shape, with feelings and needs and body functions, who has to be pushed out of his safe dark watery home through a bony gateway and along a narrow pathway, to emerge unhurt and well. And since the gateway and pathway are made of living tissue they too must be left safe and well. Labor is the gradual process that enables this important journey to be made.
The first stage is the longest and during it the cervix, the ring of muscle which is the neck of the womb has to thin out so that it disappears, leaving a clear way for the baby to get out of the uterus and into the vagina.
It is pulled up by contraction of the muscle fibers of the uterus, and the gap widens gradually, until it reaches a diameter of about ten centimeters (approximately 4 inches). This stage usually takes about 13 hours in a first labor (though it may be longer) and about seven hours or less in subsequent ones (some women have been known to have a first stage of less than one hour, but that is rare). These hours, be they long or short, are by no means all agonizing. Once again, the dramatic film makers have got it wrong. While some of the contractions in the later stages may be strong and uncomfortable they need not be severely distressing and many women who have trained for ‘natural childbirth’ actively enjoy them.
Smoking During Pregnancy
IS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO GIVE UP SMOKING?
Quite honestly, yes. Smoking cigarettes is positively proven to be linked with lung cancer, various forms of gastric and heart disease and other illnesses, so for your own sake alone you’d be wise to give it up. If you are having a baby it is even more important -
first of all he is entitled to have a mother who will live her full lifespan and bring him up, and secondly smoking can damage his growth and development.
The cigarette smoke exerts a direct effect on blood vessels, constricting them, and this reduces the amount of blood flowing through them. This is very important in the placenta because it is the flow of blood there that ensures the baby receives all the nourishment and oxygen he needs.
It has been shown that smoking thirty cigarettes a day can reduce the baby’s birth weight by as much as ten per cent – and small babies are at-risk babies.
Having A Baby
WHY DO SOME WOMEN HAVE TO HAVE CAESARIAN OPERATIONS?
The operation that is performed to remove a baby from the mother’s uterus via an incision in her abdomen, rather than through the traditional route, is called caesarian section. It is said that Julius Caesar was born this way, at a time when such operations were only done when the mother had died, but in fact his mother lived long after his birth, so this seems unlikely.
Probably the first recorded successful operation was performed by one Jacob Nufer, a Swiss sow gelder, who in 1500 saved both his wife and their baby in an emergency by swift application of the tools of his trade. The operation has been performed with varying degrees of success throughout the succeeding centuries, until now it is one of the safest operations that can be done and is definitely life-saving.