Strollerderby : oxygen

They Say: Moms Shut Down Infant Brains During Birth (It's a Good Thing)

Miriam Axel-Lute — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:17:00 GMT

Ah, oxytocin, how we love you. Or how you make us love others. Or something. But that's not all. Oxytocin, the hormone associated with social relationships, including maternal-infant bonding, lust, and trust, now has a different kind of role to add to its resume:

Science blogger Ed Yong explains that apparently the flush of oxytocin that is released when a fetus's head starts pushing on the inside of the cervix in labor sends a "chill-out" message to the newborn brain, causing it to not respond for a while to the neurotransmitter known as GABA, which pre- and post-birth usually keeps all those nerve cells firing away at rapid pace, learning and growing.

My first reaction to this was wonder if this was a way of softening the psychological drama of leaving the warm, soft, wet womb and its constant heartbeat and heading out into this big bad world.

That may be a side effect, but the researchers seem to think it's a little more pragmatic than that: When a baby brain is all zen on oxytocin, it needs a lot less oxygen, which means it's at much less risk of damage from a temporary oxygen deprivation, one of the most common dangers of birth. Handy.

It's cool to know your hormones are that on the ball. It also seems like oxytocin is powerful enough on so many fronts that even if you do need to plan a c-section for some reason you might want to wait until labor starts to give you and your kid that hormone hit. (Waiting for labor, as I learned from my friend who recently insisted on it, is apparently exceedingly rare. Perhaps that's a post for another time.)

In the meantime, I wonder if large enough doses of oxytocin would chill out my brain for a while?

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Pregnant Women Compete in Marathon

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:50:00 GMT

Meet the Speed Bumps: a relay team of five women who are planning to beat the pants of off their competition in Ohio’s Road Runner Akron Marathon.

The only difference between this team and their 10,000 or so competitors is that the Speed Bumps will all be running for two. All five women are in or nearing their third trimester, with Kimberly Bucey (pictured) the farthest along at eight months.

All of the women got the OK from their doctors before agreeing to compete, but some of their husbands are nervous nonetheless. Naturally, the key to healthy exercise during pregnancy is to listen to your body’s cues (for instance, if you can’t catch your breath, your baby may not be getting enough oxygen), and this may be harder to do when you’re competing.

But the Speed Bumps are marathon buffs who are thrilled to be able to keep running during their pregnancies, and are confident they can do so in a healthy manner. “It’s great to keep running because it’s great to stay in shape,” said Monica Nowac, one of the Speed Bumps. “And it’s great to spread the word about staying in shape while you’re pregnant. To think anything else is simply archaic at this point.”

What do you think? Is "spreading the word" about exercise during pregnancy a laudable goal, or are those nine months when staying in shape should be the last thing you're worried about?

Photo: Ohio.com

Stillborn Baby Comes Back to Life

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:50:00 GMT

I know what you’re thinking, and the answer is no: I did not learn about this story from The National Enquirer. Sensational though this headline sounds, it is factually accurate, according to numerous Israeli news sources.

In Israel, a 26-year-old pregnant woman began hemorrhaging and experiencing intense pain. Tests showed that her fetus, in its 23^rd week of gestation, was already dead. After an emergency operation to remove the fetus, doctors pronounced the 610-gram baby girl dead. She was sent to the morgue to be prepared for burial.

Five hours later, the baby’s mother asked to see her daughter’s body one last time. Picking up the tiny bundle, she immediately started screaming. Her baby was moving. The child was rushed to the intensive care unit, where she is still struggling to survive.

The baby’s father has criticized the Western Galilee Hospital for negligence, accusing them of too quickly pronouncing his premature daughter dead. But the hospital director maintains that senior doctors made no mistakes; the only way to explain how the baby spontaneously started breathing again is that it was a “medical miracle.”

He noted that this miracle may have been related to the cool temperature of the morgue, which vastly lowered the baby's oxygen consumption. There have been extremely rare cases of people who "came back to life" after it appeared that they had frozen to death. The Health Ministry will likely set up an investigating committee to look into the matter.

Photo: Channel 2

UPDATE:

Baby Never Really "Came Back to Life"