The oxytocin hormone and child birth?!?
hi does anybody know of any disorders which cause lack of oxytocin production in women, affecting child birth? Or any other disorders within the body which may cause difficult child birth?
THANX!
Answers:
It is very common for women in labor to have what doctors consider insufficient oxytocin to deliver the baby. However, this is not a disorder: Oxytocin levels naturally rise and fall.
Oxytocin is produced by the brain as part of maintaining our normal physical state. As it travels through the bloodstream, it helps regulate blood pressure, hunger and thirst. It's also released in spurts in response to specific stimuli: orgasm, being stroked, being close to people we love, petting a furry animal.
Basically, oxytocin is what makes us experience that state we call love.
If oxytocin rises when we feel safe and happy, it falls when we feel frightened, anxious or stressed. Oxytocin is part of the body's natural response to what’s going on around us.
Here's how the normal labor and birth process goes: The brain produces pulses of oxytocin, which cause the muscles of the uterus to contract. Those contractions begin to move the baby down the birth canal. At the same time, oxytocin eases the pain that would normally accompany all that stretching. Eventually, the cervix widens enough for the muscle contractions to push the baby out.
At the same time, the oxytocin cause the contractions of the uterus to continue, squeezing the tissue close and reducing bleeding.
This natural physical process is not unlike that leading up to an orgasm: Contractions slowly build until there's release. In fact, some women do experience orgasms during childbirth.
Now, imagine if you had to reach orgasm in an unfamiliar, brightly lit place with strangers rushing around and interrupting you. It would be pretty hard. Even if it’s a cheery hospital, the strange surroundings and associations with pain and illness can make it hard to relax enough for those oxytocin pulses to carry the baby out into the world.
Also, the oxytocin pulses need to build intensity, and some hospitals simply don’t allow enough time. If labor doesn’t progress according to their timetable, they begin intravenous pitocin, a synthetic form of oxytocin. Some midwives think that because the amount of pitocin administered is much greater than the oxytocin that should be naturally produced, the contractions are much stronger and more painful.
You might want to consider researching the functions of the pituiroty gland--that is where the hormone lies. Try www.familydoctor.org something should be there. Good Luck!
Well I have never hard of delivery problems resulting from lack of oxytocin hormone, so am not sure how common that is. But of other disorders of the body that may cause difficulty in child birth or delivery,
1. the most common is cephalopelvic dispropotion, which means that the baby can't pass through the birth canal. The reason to that could be a small brithcanal or a big head of the baby!
2. weak or poor uterine contractions so that the labor fails to progress in a normal order this occurs in people in their first pregnancies because of the in experienced uterus.
3. Multiple pregnancies, as in twins, triplets etc.
4. Abnormal presentation of the fetus, that is the fetus instead of having the head in the birth canal at time of delivery, it has another part of the body most common the buttocks (breech).
You said 'difficult child birth', this is a broad subject and the conditions are numerous.
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THANX!
Answers:
It is very common for women in labor to have what doctors consider insufficient oxytocin to deliver the baby. However, this is not a disorder: Oxytocin levels naturally rise and fall.
Oxytocin is produced by the brain as part of maintaining our normal physical state. As it travels through the bloodstream, it helps regulate blood pressure, hunger and thirst. It's also released in spurts in response to specific stimuli: orgasm, being stroked, being close to people we love, petting a furry animal.
Basically, oxytocin is what makes us experience that state we call love.
If oxytocin rises when we feel safe and happy, it falls when we feel frightened, anxious or stressed. Oxytocin is part of the body's natural response to what’s going on around us.
Here's how the normal labor and birth process goes: The brain produces pulses of oxytocin, which cause the muscles of the uterus to contract. Those contractions begin to move the baby down the birth canal. At the same time, oxytocin eases the pain that would normally accompany all that stretching. Eventually, the cervix widens enough for the muscle contractions to push the baby out.
At the same time, the oxytocin cause the contractions of the uterus to continue, squeezing the tissue close and reducing bleeding.
This natural physical process is not unlike that leading up to an orgasm: Contractions slowly build until there's release. In fact, some women do experience orgasms during childbirth.
Now, imagine if you had to reach orgasm in an unfamiliar, brightly lit place with strangers rushing around and interrupting you. It would be pretty hard. Even if it’s a cheery hospital, the strange surroundings and associations with pain and illness can make it hard to relax enough for those oxytocin pulses to carry the baby out into the world.
Also, the oxytocin pulses need to build intensity, and some hospitals simply don’t allow enough time. If labor doesn’t progress according to their timetable, they begin intravenous pitocin, a synthetic form of oxytocin. Some midwives think that because the amount of pitocin administered is much greater than the oxytocin that should be naturally produced, the contractions are much stronger and more painful.
You might want to consider researching the functions of the pituiroty gland--that is where the hormone lies. Try www.familydoctor.org something should be there. Good Luck!
Well I have never hard of delivery problems resulting from lack of oxytocin hormone, so am not sure how common that is. But of other disorders of the body that may cause difficulty in child birth or delivery,
1. the most common is cephalopelvic dispropotion, which means that the baby can't pass through the birth canal. The reason to that could be a small brithcanal or a big head of the baby!
2. weak or poor uterine contractions so that the labor fails to progress in a normal order this occurs in people in their first pregnancies because of the in experienced uterus.
3. Multiple pregnancies, as in twins, triplets etc.
4. Abnormal presentation of the fetus, that is the fetus instead of having the head in the birth canal at time of delivery, it has another part of the body most common the buttocks (breech).
You said 'difficult child birth', this is a broad subject and the conditions are numerous.
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