Why is childbirth still sometimes fatal for women, and what measures is modern medicine taking to reduce these risks?
In: Biology
A baby’s head is too big for the hole it needs to come out of. This makes it harder for the baby to come out safely because it needs to be in exactly the right position – a bit like a (meaty) shape sorter. Otherwise, the baby can get stuck, and that can lead to extreme tiredness and stress (the mother’s body working too hard), which can kill both the mother and the baby, or bleeding, which can also kill the mother or the baby.
Even if the baby does manage to come out exactly right, there’s a second bit called the placenta which also has to be born. It’s like a big, slippery, veiny frisbee that attaches to the baby’s belly button and feeds the baby while it’s in its mother’s tummy. Sometimes, the placenta doesn’t come out properly – a bit of it can get left behind. This can lead to bleeding – which can kill the mother – or to infection, which can also kill the mother. Infection is when germs get into your body and make you ill. If an infection gets REALLY bad, you can die.
Talking of infection: the womb (the space in a woman’s body where a baby grows) is like a big, open wound just after a baby’s born – so there’s a lot of space for germs to grow in and make the mother very ill. Again, if she gets ill enough, she can die.
That’s how I would explain the basics to a five year old. Not even going into things like pre-eclampsia or amniotic fluid emboli or any of the other less common but still eminently deadly conditions that can appear peri-natally.
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