This is going to sound dumb, but with modern technology, why can’t we place a premature baby back in the womb and make some sort of drug to delay labor until the child is fully-baked?
In: 2
Labour is a positive feedback loop mechanism. It will only stop once birth has happened. There are drugs to delay labour by a few days but once the process has started, it is very difficult to completely stop it.
Our baby incubator technology is so good at this point that there’s truly no reason to subject the mother to that sort of thing. Plus, once the baby starts breathing, there’s really no going back from that.
They can delay to a certain extent. Tocolytics (like Magnesium sulfate) can be used to delay births in premature cases, but sometimes, the body just wants whatever is happening to be over. This is called a positive feedback loop. In the case of birth, the body increases oxytocin (which increases contractual force) until the baby is out.
The placenta is the “support system” for the fetus in the womb and that’s ejected and I believe damaged during the birthing process. So you’d have to completely repair the placenta (in terms of full healing) before you could stuff the baby back into it and then try to reconnect the placenta to the womb, which we cannot do. Nor do I think we’re even close. I would also imagine some massive hormone therapies necessary to get the woman’s body back into pregnancy-mode.
There are some medications that can delay labor if they’re used early enough in the birthing process.
It’s a valid question.
One of the issues is with one organ that is formed in the mother-to-be: the placenta. The placenta is what the umbilical cord of the baby is attached to. The placenta is attached to the mother’s womb and acts as the transfer point for nutrients and wastes between the mother and baby.
The placenta is birthed along with the baby. If it’s not removed, it can get infected and threaten the mother’s health. It’s not possible to reattach the placenta to the mother’s womb so even putting the baby back means it will not get any nutrients or be able to remove wastes.
It’s better for the premature baby to be placed in an intensive care unit (ICU) so machines can monitor its health and so that doctors and nurses can easily see and deal with any issues.
We don’t have the technology to make preterm babies *stay* in to full term, let alone to put one back in. Drugs to delay labor only work for a few days and are not without risk to both mother and child.
In the mother’s uterus, the baby is contained in something called the placenta. In birth, the placenta is ruptured and then ejected from the woman’s body. It’s pretty trivial to put a baby in an NICU unit in a hospital. Engineering some kind of artificial placenta and putting a baby into it and back into the mother’s body might as well be magic.
Latest Answers