What makes some babies come early, and some come late? What tells the female body that it’s time to start labour?
In: Biology
Labor is induced by uterine stretching. Once the baby reaches a certain size, it begins to stretch the walls of the uterus (or the womb). This also triggers the release a hormone know as oxytocin. While oxytocin has many different effects in the body, one of them is to increase uterine muscle contraction, further inducing labor. This cycle is know as a positive feedback loop, and is one of the only positive feedback loops in the human body.
This answers only part of your question, which is what tells the body to initiate labor. However, as another poster mentioned, we don’t know exactly why some babies are born early or late. We do know, however, some risk factors:
– uncontrolled diabetes
-smoking/drinking/drug use
-poor nutrition
-infections like UTIs or amniotic membrane infections
-many more
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