Childbirth Preservation and Saving Umbilical Cord Blood Banking Storage

Filed Under What Goes Inside Us | January 14th, 2007

As mentioned before, it takes some 280 days, or about 9 months, from the time the fertilized egg buries itself in the wall of the uterus until the new child is born. Most unborn children float upside down in the mother’s uterus; a few, however, stay in the upright position. If they stay upside down, they are born head first; if they stay upright, they are born bottom first.

Unborn children move their arms and legs quite a bit inside the mother’s uterus, and she often feels the kicking.

This is their way of exercising and getting to use their muscles. Sometimes the kicking is so strong that it may hurt the mother a bit, but it doesn’t hurt much or for very long. As a matter of fact, most mothers enjoy feeling their babies kick.

When the baby has fully developed and is ready to be born, the muscles of the uterus start to have contractions. These muscle contractions push the unborn child further down inside the mother so that, eventually, it will emerge from the vagina. At first, the contractions are not very strong and they come every fifteen or twenty minutes or so, and last only a few seconds. Then they increase in strength and take place regularly every few minutes and last for about a minute. Contractions usually keep up for several hours, getting stronger all the time. Then the fluid sac, in which the unborn child has been floating, bursts and the fluid runs out through the vagina.

The combination of the contractions of the muscles of the uterus and the pressure of the baby’s head-or if he is in an upright position, the pressure of his bottom-causes the cervix of the uterus to get bigger. Finally, the baby’s head-or bottom-is pushed out of the uterus into the vagina. When this happens, the birth of the child will take place within a few minutes. The doctor who is delivering the baby then gently lifts the head out of the vagina, and the rest of the baby soon comes out too. If the baby’s bottom happens to come first, the doctor reaches in and gently pulls out the feet. Then the rest of the body follows, the head coming out last.

Immediately after the baby is born, the doctor holds him upside down by the feet, so that any mucus that may be in the throat can run out. Most babies let out a little cry the second they are born, and then they begin to breathe for the first time all by themselves. Remember, inside the mother’s body, the baby is supplied with the oxygen he needs by the mother. If a baby doesn’t begin breathing right away by himself, the doctor will give him a swat on the behind, which soon starts him crying and breathing.

Remember that a baby is attached to its mother’s uterus by the umbilical cord. As soon as the baby is born, the
doctor puts a clamp on the cord near the child’s navel and he then cuts the umbilical cord straight across. The child no longer needs to be attached to the mother, of course, because he will now get oxygen through his own lungs and nourishment through nursing or taking a bottle.

The unborn child floats upside down, surrounded by fluid in the amniotic sac. Since the child doesn’t breathe none of this fluid gets into his lungs.

When the unborn child is in an upright position, it is called a breech. It is a little more difficult for a breech to be born, but the great majority come out without too much trouble.

A few minutes after the child is born, the placenta and umbilical cord are discharged by the mother and her uterus returns to normal.

Childbirth usually takes longer when the mother is having her first child. First children may take anywhere from half a day to a full day, or even more, from the time the uterus starts contracting until birth. Second, third, and other children may only take a few hours to be born.

Doctors have a special name for childbirth. They call it labor. That’s because it is real work for a mother to push out a baby, and most mothers are pretty tired by the time the child is finally born. However, they are not only tired but extremely happy, because the labor is worth it. Just ask your mother how happy she was when she finished giving birth to you!

Once the head has been delivered from the vagina, the shoulders and chest, and the rest of the body, will come out very easily. This is because the head is by far the largest part of a newborn baby’s body. In a breech delivery, the head comes out after all the rest of the body has been delivered, and this may take a few minutes longer.

Once in a while, for medical reasons, doctors may decide that a woman should have the baby by a special process called cesarean operation. This is done when the doctors think this way is safer both for the unborn child and for the mother. In a cesarean operation, they open the mother’s abdomen and uterus and lift out the baby. After the child is born, they sew up the uterus and the abdomen, and the mother is as good as new again.

Before the delivery of the baby, the mother may decide that she doesn’t want anesthesia during childbirth even though she knows it can be painful. Other mothers prefer not to feel pain during childbirth. They will therefore be put to sleep with general anesthesia, or will have injections to relieve the pain. Many times, the doctor will decide what is best to do. For example, if the unborn child is not very strong, the doctor may not want the mother to receive general anesthesia as this may affect the child. He may then recommend some other method of pain relief.

If a mother has twin or more babies in her uterus, they are always born one at a time. Usually, the second child follows a few minutes after the first. If there are triplets or quadruplets, they are born just a few minutes apart, too.

How the Unborn Child Develops from Embryo Stem Cell Research

Filed Under What Goes Inside Us | January 13th, 2007

Once the embryo, with its fluid sac surrounding it, is buried in the wall of the uterus, it develops quickly. It grows from the size of a pinhead at one week of age to that of a pea at five weeks of age, to that of a limb bean at eight weeks of age, and to that of a hen’s egg by the time it is two and a half months along the road to development. Of course, as it grows during the first few weeks, the embryo doesn’t look much like a baby because it hasn’t really begun to take shape. However, even at six weeks, the primitive tissues that will eventually form the eyes, ears, arms, legs, head, chest, abdomen, spine and other organs can be seen. If the embryo were to be examined at this time, these parts could actually be recognized under a magnifying glass.

At first the embryo doesn’t look much like a human being, and it passes through many stages of development that resemble various forms of animal life. In the early days of the first few weeks, the embryo resembles a fish, then a frog, and finally takes on the shape of an animal with four limbs. But it grows and changes so quickly that by the end of three months in its mother’s uterus, it really looks like a human baby. Its head, neck, chest, abdomen, arms, legs, fingers, toes, and even nails begin to appear as they will when the infant is born.

The developing baby is called a fetus when it reaches the age of about three to three and a half months. At about four and a half months after pregnancy has begun, the mother starts to feel the baby moving around within her uterus. We say the mother “feels life,” and we know that the fetus is growing actively.

The unborn child is attached to its mother by a cordlike structure that extends from its abdomen to the placenta. The structure is called the umbilical cord. The placenta is a large, round, flat structure almost as large as a dinner plate that attaches to the wall of the uterus. The nourishment and oxygen so necessary to life pass from the mother’s blood into the blood vessels of the placenta. This nourishment, containing all the proteins, necessary sugars, fats, vitamins, minerals, and fluids, then flows through the placenta into the blood vessels of the umbilical cord. From there, it enters the baby’s body in the abdominal region and travels throughout the blood vessels of the baby. The waste products resulting from use of the nourishing substances flows out. through the umbilical cord to the placenta, and then into the mother’s body. She then disposes of these wastes, mainly through her kidneys and lungs.

As mentioned before, the baby float, in a fluid sac that surrounds it, called the amniotic sac. Of course, the unborn child doesn’t drown, because it doesn’t breathe while in its mother’s uterus. It gets all the oxygen it needs from the mother through the placenta and the umbilical cord. Therefore, it isn’t necessary for it to breathe. And it doesn’t have to move its bowels either, because instead of eating through its mouth, it is getting its nourishment from the mother through the placenta and umbilical cord.

The fluid that surrounds the developing baby helps to protect it and cushions any blow that might strike it accidentally from the outside. It is rare indeed that an unborn child is injured, even if the mother has a severe fall.

At about five months along in its development, a doctor can often hear the baby’s heartbeat through a special kind of stethoscope. And by the time the fetus is six months old, it will probably be fourteen to fifteen inches long and will weigh about two pounds. At this age, all the unborn child’s organs are well formed.

So rapid is the child’s development that it gains about five pounds and grows about six inches in length during the last three months within its mother’s uterus. And the child is ready to be born when it has been inside its mother for about nine months. Some children, however, are born a month or two earlier. These are called premature babies, and they require very special care after they are born if they are to live. Occasionally, a baby is born two or three weeks late, but that doesn’t seem to matter at all.

Fertilized Frozen Transfered Embryo Egg Develops in Stages in Uterus

Filed Under What Goes Inside Us | January 13th, 2007

As soon as the sperm has entered the egg, the nucleus of the sperm and the nucleus of the egg unite to form one nucleus. The nucleus is the central, important part of the sperm and the egg. Under the microscope it looks like a large dark dot. Within the nucleus lie the chromosomes, the genes, and other necessary elements of life.

Chromosomes are threadlike structures within the nucleus of the sperm and egg. They carry the genes, which are responsible for what the new child will look like, how he will act, and all the rest of his traits and characteristics. The chromosomes and genes are responsible for a child resembling one parent more than the other. They are responsible for a child having blue eyes, or brown eyes, or green eyes. They determine how short or tall a child will grow to be, whether his nose will be long or short, narrow or wide, and whether he will inherit various personality traits that his parents have.

Most important is that the chromosomes of the sperm decide whether the new child will be a boy or a girl. The chromosomes of the egg have nothing to do with the child being a boy or a girl! It was your father-not your mother-who supplied the chromosome that determined that you are a girl or a boy. Here’s how it works:

Each and every normal sperm and egg carries twenty-three chromosomes. When the sperm and egg unite, these chromosomes unite and form pairs.

Here, we see the egg, already fertilized by a sperm, beginning to divide into many cells. This takes place while the egg is traveling down from the fallopian tube to the uterus. After the egg buries itself into the wall of the uterus it grows extremely rapidly.

responsible for the inheritance of a different trait or characteristic. Some scientists think that about 17 million possible combinations of chromosomes and genes can occur when a sperm unites with an egg. Thus, even though brothers and sisters may look or act alike in many ways, they may also differ tremendously from one another. They can have entirely different personalities and characters, or may not look alike at all, depending upon the combination of genes that results from the union of the sperm and the egg.

Some genes are called dominant. This means they are so strong that they are likely to appear in most of the children of one set of parents, and they probably will appear in grandchildren, too. That is why we sometimes see a girl or boy who not only looks like a parent but like a grandparent. Other genes are called recessive. This means that they are not very strong and are not likely to appear in many of the children of one set of parents. A recessive gene may produce a characteristic such as blue eyes in a family where everyone has brown eyes. A recessive gene may not happen again for a long time. Thus, a blue-eyed woman who came from a brown-eyed family may have all brown-eyed children and grandchildren.

Sometimes a child inherits genes that make him look like his father and at the same time inherits genes that give him his mother’s personality and character.

After the sperm and egg have united to form one cell with one nucleus, it immediately begins to multiply and divide. First it splits into two, then the two into four, and so forth. This happens even while the fertilized egg is traveling down the Fallopian tube toward the uterus. In the three to four days it takes to reach the uterus, the fertilized egg will have multiplied many, many times so that it will have become a cluster of many cells. And as each cell of the fast-growing egg divides, its chromosomes split into half, one half going to each of the two new cells. This means that every single new cell will contain the same chromosomes that were in the original sperm and the original egg.

Also, as the fertilized egg travels down to the uterus, it begins to develop a sac containing fluid around it. This fluid sac is called the amnion. On about the seventh day after the egg has been fertilized, the sac will attach itself to the lining of the uterus and will begin to absorb nourishment produced for it in the uterine lining. The egg and its sac will then bury itself in the lining, a placenta will develop, and the egg now called an embryo–continues its rapid growth.

The Beginning of Life-Conception in Ovum

Filed Under What Goes Inside Us | January 13th, 2007

The beginning of life is called conception. It takes place when the egg of the female is penetrated by the sperm of the male. This union between the sperm and the egg is known as fertilization. The entire process of conception in the human, as well as in other animals, is one of Nature’s great wonders. Let’s start from the very beginning:

As mentioned elsewhere, the male sperm are deposited in the vagina near the entrance of the cervix of the uterus or womb. Nature seems to have sensed that it would be a difficult trip for the sperm to bring about conception. For this reason, 100 to 200 million sperm are provided just for the purpose of fertilizing one female egg! The millions of tiny sperm, which can be seen only under a microscope, are so delicate that they live only a few minutes unless they are successful in passing through the cervix into the uterus.

The sperm have tails, called flagella, that push them forward. Actually, sperm look very much like miniature tadpoles, and they move forward like tadpoles by wiggling their tails from side to side. When they reach the cervix, the sperm must swim through a mucous barrier that covers the entrance to the inside of the uterus. Tens of millions of sperm are unable to do this, and are lost. Those sperm that pierce the cervix then swim up the three to four inches of the inside of the uterus to find the two exits at the upper ends where the Fallopian tubes begin. Tens of millions more sperm are lost before they get to the Fallopian tubes. Those that do survive swim into the narrow passageway of the Fallopian tube where they may finally meet an egg. But this meeting can take place only during two to three days of each month.

The egg leaves the ovary and enters the fallopian tube. There. It is fertilized by a single sperm. The fertilized egg begins to divide and to make many cells. When it reaches the uterus. some 3 to 4 days later, the fertilized egg buries itself in the wall of the uterus.

Females normally have one egg, no larger than the point of a pin, that leaves an ovary each month. This is called ovulation. Ovulation usually occurs halfway between two menstrual periods. (The menstrual period is described in chapter 21.)

When an egg leaves an ovary it finds its way to the funnel-shaped opening of the Fallopian tube. Nobody knows how it manages to get from the ovary to the Fallopian tube because an egg has no ability to move by itself. However, it gets there somehow. Once inside the Fallopian tube, the egg is very slowly swept down toward the uterus by tiny hairlike structures that line the tubes. These hairlike structures, called cilia, are so small they can be seen only under a microscope. It takes anywhere from three to five days for the egg to travel the three inches of the Fallopian tube, and during this time it may meet the sperm.

If an egg meets the sperm in the Fallopian tube, there is a good chance that one of the sperm will enter the egg and unite with it. This is called fertilization.

So, even if there are 100 million sperm that meet an egg in the Fallopian tube, only one will usually be able to pierce the outer coating of the egg and cause fertilization. When this happens, all the other millions of sperm die. Sometimes, however, two or more eggs emerge from the ovary. They, too, may be fertilized, each one by a different sperm, and the result will be twins or triplets or even more. Also, twins can result by the splitting of a single fertilized egg into two.

The male’s sperm, which is responsible for determining the gender of the embryo. contains approximately equal numbers of chromosomes for each sex. There Is, therefore, an equal chance of a couple having a boy or a girl, and approximately equal numbers of children of each sex are born.

But even when the egg and the sperm are united, it is not yet certain that a new life will come about. The fertilized egg must continue its journey for another few (lays down the remainder of the tube until it reaches the cavity of the uterus.

In order for pregnancy to take place, the fertilized egg must bury itself in the lining of the uterus at a spot where it can take root and grow. This is very much like what happens to a seed when it is planted. If a seed is planted in healthy soil with plenty of moisture and minerals in the ground, if it is watered often enough and in the sunshine frequently, and if the climate is not too cold or too hot, the seed will sprout and grow into a plant. In the same way, the fertilized egg must plant itself into a healthy lining of the uterus. If the lining is infected, or if there isn’t sufficient blood coming to that part of the uterus, the egg may no take root properly and will not grow. Then, even though it has been fertilized by a sperm, it will be prise out of the uterus into the vagina and pregnancy will end before it really begins.

With all the things that have to happen just right, it’s remarkable, isn’t. it, that so many millions of children are born every year!

Although we know a great deal about how life begins, there are still many processes that we know very little about. For example, no one knows why only one sperm out of hundreds of millions can penetrate an egg. What keeps the other sperm out? Also, no one knows how the egg chooses the particular sperm that enters it. Did you ever stop to think that if a different sperm had penetrated your mother’s egg you wouldn’t be you! You might: be your brother or your sister. Now, wouldn’t that be funny?