Babies will be born when they're darn well ready!

More proof that babies will be born when they are ready to be born!!!  Dr. Momma at Peaceful Parenting  writes about a study that shows that it's the baby's lungs that release a protein that triggers labour to begin!.  Yet more proof that we need to stop meddling with unnecessary inductions- if a baby is ready to be born (in most cases), s/he will be born.  If baby is NOT ready to be born yet, then doctors need to leave well enough alone and let the baby decide when they are ready to enter this big world.  Too many times medical professionals try to decide that baby needs to be born for the flimsiest of reasons- post dates (heaven forbid that baby decides s/he needs to cook longer than 42 weeks!!), baby is "too big", baby is "too small",  or even just because the doctor is heading out on vacation and wants this all taken care of before s/he leaves.  Thus we have a huge amount of failed inductions that lead to Caesarean sections, babies that are born too early and end up in NICU with respiratory problems, babies and mothers that die due to the use of induction drugs like Misoprostil, or mothers that die from amniotic fluid embolism due to being induced.....

...Yes, early inductions do save some lives.... but rarely.

Leave well enough alone!  Babies will be born when they are darn well ready!! 

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Fetal Lungs Protein Release Triggers Labor to Begin

Babies know when and how to be born.
Each one knows when s/he is ready for life on the outside.
Let's not rush them.
Let's trust them.
We've long known that a mammal's lungs are the last organ to develop inutero before it is baby's time to exit. Disrupting this normal process (and initiating/inducing labor to start before a baby triggers labor on his/her own) frequently causes a cascade of complications - from difficulty in latch, poor breathing, increased infection, decreased immunity, under development, failure to thrive, and an increase in SIDS.

Now, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas researchers have found that it is in fact the fetal lungs themselves which provide the signal to initiate labor.

Drs. Carole Mendelson, Jennifer Condon and Pancharatnam Jeyasuria published findings that a substance secreted by the lungs of a developing fetus contains the key signal that initiates labor.

The protein released from the lungs of a developing mouse fetus initiates a cascade of chemical events leading to the mother's initiation of labor. This research, which has implications for humans, marks the first time a link between a specific fetal lung protein and labor has been identified, said Mendelson, professor of BioChemistry and Obstetrics and Gynecology and senior author of the study. Their research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is currently available online here.

The initiation of term labor is carefully timed to begin only after the embryo is sufficiently mature to survive outside the womb. Previous studies suggested that the signal for labor in humans may arise from the fetus, but the nature of the signal and actual mechanism was unclear. In this study, researchers found that the key labor triggering substance, surfactant, is essential for normal breathing outside the womb.

"We found that a protein within lung, surfactant, serves as a hormone of labor that signals to the mother's uterus when the fetal lungs are sufficiently mature to withstand the critical transition from life in fluid to airbreathing," said Mendelson.

HERE to read the entire article on Peaceful Parenting