Keith Eddleman

More and more women are expressing interest in nontraditional or alternative birthing methods, and more and more possibilities are becoming available. Certainly, the following options aren’t for everyone, but knowing what’s possible can be helpful. Delivering without anesthesia Natural childbirth usually refers to giving birth without any medications or anesthesia.

Once you find out you’re pregnant, follow a recommended schedule of prenatal visits and review the tests you can expect for each doctor’s visit. Learning a few medical abbreviations used by your doctors and hospital staff will help you keep up with what's going on all the way through your delivery.Keeping tabs on your baby’s growth is exciting, especially when you have a helpful growth chart to follow.

On or about the fifth day of development, the blastocyst attaches to the blood-rich lining of the uterus during a process called implantation. Part of the blastocyst grows to become the embryo (the baby in the first eight weeks of development), and the other part becomes the placenta (the organ that implants into the uterus to provide oxygen and nourishment to the fetus and eliminate its waste products).

Your positive pregnancy test marks a new beginning. The time has come to start thinking about what lies ahead. After you decide who your practitioner will be, give the office a call to find out how to proceed. Some practices want you to come in for a visit with the office nurse to give a medical history and confirm your good news with either a blood or urine test, whereas others schedule a first visit with the practitioner.

If you’ve ever had a parent-to-be show you an ultrasound picture of the baby, you know determining what you’re looking at, let alone detecting a family resemblance, isn’t always easy! But ultrasound pictures can be amazingly clear and useful — if you know what you’re looking for. Following are some of the items that doctors and sonographers try to pick out on ultrasound to find out whether the baby is growing and developing well.

If the information from the fetal monitor raises concerns or is ambiguous, your practitioner can perform other tests to help determine how to proceed with your labor. Labor admission test This test involves performing electronic fetal heart rate monitoring for about 20–30 minutes upon admission to the labor and delivery floor.

The most common medications used systemically are relatives of the narcotic morphine — drugs such as meperidine (brand name Demerol), fentanyl (Sublimaze), butorphanal (Stadol), and nalbuphine (Nubain). These medications can be given every two to four hours as needed, either intravenously or intramuscularly. Any medication you take (even when you’re not pregnant) has side effects, and pain relievers used during labor are no exception, although your doctor will do what he can to reduce these side effects, often by combining medications.

If you think you’re in labor, call your practitioner. When a practitioner is trying to determine whether you’re in labor, he performs an internal exam to look for several things: Dilation: Your cervix is closed for most of your pregnancy but may gradually start to dilate during the last couple of weeks, especially if you’ve had a baby before.

Caput succedaneum — more commonly called caput — refers to a circular area of swelling on the baby's head, located at the spot that pushed against the cervix's opening during delivery. The exact location of the swelling varies, depending on the position that the baby's head was in. The swollen area can range in size from only a few millimeters in diameter to several centimeters (a few inches).