Vaginal Delivery

Most expecting mothers spend a great del of the first forty weeks of pregnancy thinking about the actual delivery. If this happens to be the first time you are going to be giving birth, the though of labor and delivery might scare you a bit, and even if you have already had children before it is normal to worry before seeing your adorable beautiful baby in arms. This is why being informed has a lot of benefits especially in cases where some eventuality does come up.

The most common method of labor is definitely, the vaginal delivery. Most likely the doctors will call it a spontaneous vaginal delivery that happens as the result of your pushing and goes about without the need for much intervention. If you were to need help, the doctor will use forceps or an extractor aspirator. A delivery that occurs with the help of one of these instruments is called an operative or instrumented vaginal delivery.

During the first stage of labor, the neck dilates and the membranes break. When the cervix is completely dilated (meaning it has dilated 10 centimeters), the first stage of the labor has been done and the gestating mother is ready to go onto the second stage, which consists of pushing the baby so that it descends down the birth canal and is born. At the end of the first stage your might feel an overwhelming amount of pressure on your rectum, and might feel like you need to use the bathroom. This sensation will become stronger during the contractions; the head of the baby presses the internal organs when it descends down the vaginal canal and causes that sensation.

If you have had an epidural, it is possible that you will not feel this pressure or it will not feel as strong. If you do feel it, make sure to inform this to the doctor or nurse because this is an indication that the cervix is about to be completely dilated. The doctor and/or nurse will confirm complete dilation of the cervix and will then indicate when it is time to start pushing.

Depending on the hospital, the person that assists the expulsive stage of the labor will either be a doctor, nurse or midwife, and this also varies from doctor to doctor. The important thing is that someone is there with you to help you in this stage of the delivery.

Sometimes dilation is complete but the baby’s head is still relatively high inside the pelvis. When this happens the doctor will ask you to stop pushing until the contractions make the head of the baby go down further.