By Akpeli Othuke Andrew
My six months baby will not cease to amaze me. So young and so tender but never to lazy to be aggressive, she is an expert in snatching and putting anything that comes across her way into her mouth. This afternoon, the movie – Sounds of Music – that I was watching was interrupted several times due to her snatching and eating activities. This time, the DVD remote control was her prey. This drama made me to have a flash back to about six months ago when she was unforgivably shut in her mother’s womb as if to prevent her from causing some social disturbances when released. This made me to dash over to my bookshelf and picked up one of my Human Anatomy books which has laid there for more than five years with anyone touching it as if when touched, it is capable of inflicting a deadly disease on the person and read through the amazing process of childbirth.
According to the book, after an endless wait for nine months, the mother’s cervix which had remain impregnably shut to keep the fetus safely in the womb thins, softens and relax. How did this marvelous comes about? First, Oxytocin, a hormone produced in the brain somehow sensed that it is time for labour and it is released in a great quantity causing the cervix to dilute and the uterus to contract.
Just how the pituitary gland of the expectant mother knows when to begin releasing this hormone is a mystery. The book. Incredible Voyage – Exploring The Human Body states: “somehow her brain senses that gestation is complete and that it is time for the powerful uterine muscles … to take on their brief but heroic job.”
Secondly, the placenta which stops producing progesterone during pregnancy to prevent contraction takes cue from the released of Oxytocin to release progesterone effortlessly which makes the uterus to begin contraction. After about 8 to 13 hours of labour, the baby is pushed out through the relaxed, diluted cervix followed by the placenta.
After childbirth, how the baby quickly adapt to the new condition of life that it found itself which is far different from the maternal environment it has been for the past 37 to 42 weeks is also an another unresolved mystery. For instance, while in the uterus, the lungs of the fetus were filled of amniotic fluid, which was squeezed out when the infant passes through the birth canal. Now the lungs must be filled with air to initiate breathing, the onset of which is usually indicated by the first agonizing cry heard from a new born babe.
Drastic changes also occur in the heart and the circulatory system. A hole connecting the two atria of the heart and a blood vessel bypassing the pulmonary circulation closes, in order to reroute the blood through the lungs thus enabling the blood to absorb oxygen. It is quite amazing how this adaptation to the outside world happen so rapidly.
From that day onwards, different changes are noticed as the baby develops and tries to understand how to be part of the new world. Imagine my little girl which I saw passed through these processes some six months ago could hardly allow me to enjoy my movie due to her discovery process. What an amazing thing to think about?
Feel free to add your comments concerning the amazing process of childbirth you know below.
