When a woman goes into labour, is it her body that decides the baby is ready, or does the foetus send some sort of signal to the mother’s body to say it’s ready to come out?

Question

As above. Also, how would the answer to this title question explain babies that are born premature, or babies that are born so late that the labour has to be induced?

Thank you in advance! I have wondered this for a while!

In: 161

Answer 1

For all of us who have had to have a Pitosin drip to start mad labor for hours…No! Several things happen in combination: The lung will mature, a layer of fat develops on the child and helps with the normal weight loss after birth. Then a substance is sent from the child to the mother to start the process.

If you are a first time mother, the baby drops. Otherwise your cervix tilts forward and softens. This is when you feel the Braxton Hicks contractions as everything gets ready and you can have even a couple of cm. in dilation.

This is where it can go haywire. Some of us will do the drop and then a whole lot of nothing. Both my babies had to be induced. In the past, I would have died. I would have labored until my body gave up. As the baby was never removed surgically, both Mother and child died. In other cases of premature birth the lungs were not ready, but the birth started anyway.

So it should be the fetus sending a substance to the mother, but that does not always work correctly or at all.