labor & delivery

Information about labor and delivery, anesthesia, and delivery options.

From the first minutes after finding out you’re pregnant, you are
constantly making decisions. Decision making will be a major part of
your life for the next 18 years or so – but before you jump into
parenthood, you may want to decide where you’ll give birth.

It’s usually not until the delivery of a healthy baby that the diagnosis of an umbilical cord  wrapped around the baby’s neck is made and most of the time nobody suspected or knew about it before the delivery. 

The best way to predict whether the induction is going to be successful, and whether you are going to have a normal delivery is to do a vaginal examination and check the cervix for 5 different parameters. Doing the ‘Bishop score’ will help deciding your chances of having a vaginal delivery.

Pregnancies don’t always go as planned. There are instances when it is necessary to expedite the birthing process. This is often done via labor induction. When a woman fails to go into labor, her doctor may induce it.

Your due date is smack-dab in the middle of the holiday season. Plus or minus a week or two, you could actually go into labor on Christmas, so how do you plan for the holiday and your birth at the same time?

In most women, labor induction is not necessary because labor begins spontaneously without anyone having to do something about it. But sometimes a baby needs to be delivered before labor begins by itself.

An episiotomy is a surgical procedure done usually with scissors and made into the perineum, the skin, muscles and area between the vagina and the rectum with the goal to enlarge the vaginal opening during delivery.

Back labor is a type of labor in which the mother feels most if not all
of her contraction pain in her lower back.

There are three stages of labor starting from the time of the beginning of contractions and cervical dilatation up to the delivery of the placenta.

The cervical plug that developed in the beginning of the pregnancy will fall out at the end of the third trimester. Once the plug has washed out of the body, the cervix will start preparing for birth. This is called cervical dilation and effacement.

Before "true" labor begins, you may have "false" labor pains, also known as Braxton Hicks contractions.

A doula is a nonmedical person to help mom through the birthing process with her emotional and physical needs. Comforting, caring and understanding, the doula essentially mothers the mom-to-be.

A vaginal birth remains the number one method for baby delivery, though in many countries cesarean section rates are approaching or even exceeding 50% of deliveries.

Premature rupture of fetal membranes (PROM) is when the fetal membranes break prior to labor.

While the female body is perfectly created to give birth to children, there will be times when Mother Nature needs a bit of help. The use of operative procedures during a vaginal delivery is just like giving a little boost to mom’s birthing process.

As the pregnancy comes to a close, there are signs and symptoms mom will need to look for in order to recognize the beginning of labor.

There are 4 types of anesthesia currently used in the laboring process. These include drugs, local anesthesia, spinal anesthesia, and epidural anesthesia.

What to bring and pack when you get admitted to the hospital in labor.

The issue of female orgasm during pregnancy is actually quite controversial and in the past, it was thought that female orgasms could trigger preterm labor.