Childbirth Without Pain — Without Anesthesia or Narcosis: The Fetus in Its Natural Prison (2)

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Our last talk acquainted you with the influence of the mind in preparing the bodily organs to perform their natural task and in endowing them with their ordinary suppleness — by uprooting fear from the souls of expectant mothers, strengthening their morale, spreading reassurance, and driving off the misgivings and illusions which environment, tradition, and superstition plant around the emergence of the fetus from its natural prison when its term is done and it becomes fit to see the light, and the doors of its jail open in fulfillment of the law to which all humanity is subject. We deem it necessary here to study briefly the fetus's prison — its barriers and fortifications, its means of provisioning, the working of its outlets, and what leads to the removal of obstacles and the smoothing of difficulties before this seeker of freedom and light — so that expectant mothers may learn the facts and overcome anxiety and doubt, finding in this piece an answer to many of the questions suggested by the fetus's development while it is in the world of darkness, and the undoing of many of the illusions that used to spread terror in a mother's heart, reinforced by ignorance and empowered by the obscurity surrounding the fetus and its formation.

Science has established that the human female ovum is so small that the naked eye is almost unable to see it, for its diameter does not exceed two microns (that is, 2 percent of a millimeter). When the man's seed fertilizes it, it attaches itself to the upper part of the body of the womb and becomes the nucleus of a living human being to come. It grows with time; by the end of the first month its length reaches four millimeters, and it is enveloped by a sac equal in size to a pigeon's egg, filled with fluid. The second month is not out before the egg becomes a fetus approaching three centimeters in length, showing a head and two legs, and drawing its nourishment through its navel by means of a cord connected to the placenta, which takes from the mother's blood the nourishment necessary for the fetus. The third month does not pass before the fetus is nine centimeters long and weighs about five grams, and the egg as a whole approaches a goose egg in size. But growth gains speed after this stage: at the end of the fourth month the fetus is eighteen centimeters in length and one hundred and twenty grams in weight; the continuous beating of its heart can be heard, and should anything occur to bring it out of its prison before its time, its sex, whether male or female, can be told. The fifth month does not close before its length reaches twenty-five centimeters and its weight two hundred and sixty grams. At the end of the sixth month its length is thirty centimeters and its weight seven hundred and fifty grams; births have taken place in this month, and the newborn has lived, as recorded in the medical annals, a normal life. At the end of the seventh month the body of the fetus becomes proportionate in its members, though it remains weak in growth and not sufficiently nourished; many are those born in this month who have lived happily. But the eighth month brings the fetus's length to forty-three centimeters and strengthens the hope that it will live a natural life abounding in health and well-being. After the passage of nine full months — that is, thirty-six weeks — the fetus's weight ranges between five pounds and five and a half; its constitution is completed, its skin grows rosy, it wakens to life, and activity stirs in the members of its body. The legal term of pregnancy, however, is ten lunar months, or forty full weeks, at the end of which the fetus's weight ranges between seven pounds and seven and a half and its length between forty-eight and fifty centimeters; and in this case delivery proceeds naturally.

This prison keeps pace with its prisoner in growth and development, increasing in strength and in capacity so as to be able to carry the living creature within it and protect it, while the latter grows and makes ready for the free life. The womb — this sensitive, developing prison — varies in size as the size of the fetus and the quantity of water within it vary; at the end of pregnancy it appears as a sac of muscle fourteen inches long and about half an inch thick, furnished with nerves that direct the movement of muscular contraction, and with a network of blood channels of great importance, for it supplies it with fresh blood and carries away the deposits produced by muscular action. It is in two parts, a body and a neck. The neck is a small round opening which remains closed throughout the term of pregnancy until the hour of delivery arrives, when it widens to make way for the fetus, which passes through and looks out upon the world of living man and the world of light. When the woman is not with child, the menstrual blood passes through that opening.

As for the muscle of the womb, it is composed of three layers, on each of which we shall say a word, because of their direct bearing on our subject and on the talks to follow, which explain the theory of natural childbirth without pain, resting on the formation of these layers, their nature, the kind of functions they perform, and their effect in easing delivery or in making it difficult, in answer to mental impulses imaginary or real. The first layer is outer, composed of longitudinal fibers covering the front of the womb and its rear wall. The middle layer is composed of fibers extending in every direction, clinging together and interlocked, most of them interlaced in the shape of the figure eight, as the French write it, around the large blood vessels. The inner layer is formed of circular fibers, most of which gather in the lower part, near the outlet or neck.

It is necessary to attend to the distribution of these various fibers, so that one may understand what happens when each group of them contracts. Yet it is difficult to tell one group from another, and practically impossible for any clear difference between the fibers of these layers to appear in the dissecting room, though each of them has a property and a task belonging to no other. The longitudinal outer fibers have a property, which is the power of expulsion, and an aim, which is to empty the chamber of the womb and vacate the prison. The middle fibers, when they contract, imprison the blood in its vessels; and when they relax, they ease its movement, so that it runs its natural course in the vessels. As for the inner circular fibers, when they contract they close the door of the womb and bar it — though its true work comes at delivery — so that the prison's outlet remains shut, or narrow.

The contraction of the womb's muscle depends, of course, upon the nerve networks; and the womb draws its nerve supply from three sources, which send their signals to its various muscles. The circular fibers and the fibers of the middle layer are supplied by the "sympathetic" nervous system; the longitudinal fibers, however, have two sources furnishing them with nerves. The first is the nerve branching from the "sympathetic" system, and the second is the local nerve group within the muscle of the womb itself. This latter has no connection whatever with the spinal column or with the "sympathetic" nervous system; but this local group has an importance which appears plainly when the question is studied at length, to bring out the internal muscular harmony.

There is nothing strange in muscles opposing one another; in every region of the body there are muscles that oppose one another in their actions in order to perform their tasks most perfectly. If we wish, for example, to bend the arm at the elbow, the two-headed muscle contracts while the three-headed muscle relaxes, since by its very formation it is the opposer of the first; and if we wish to stretch the arm out, the three-headed muscle contracts and the two-headed relaxes at the same time. This opposing movement is called the harmony of muscular contractions. Should the two muscles work together in a single direction, the arm is seized with rigidity; and if the contractions are strong, it is seized with a trembling followed at once by severe pain.

A like harmony of muscular movement takes place in the intestines at stool, and in the urinary passage and the bladder at excretion. In the natural state the expelling muscles contract without meeting resistance from the muscular ring surrounding the outlet, so that the passage of the waste is easy and natural, without pain. If the state is not natural — as when there is a fissure at the outlet, or an inflammation in the urinary canal — the muscular ring contracts suddenly and resists the expelling muscular contractions, and the discharge of the waste becomes difficult and very painful. And so it happens at childbirth: in ordinary cases the harmony appears plainly in the movements of the womb's muscle; the longitudinal fibers contract in an expelling motion, and the circular fibers slacken and yield, so that the door of the womb stretches, the outlet of the prison opens, and an easy passage is made ready for the imprisoned child, leading it to the world of light and freedom.

From the general principles of the womb's structure, as we have explained it, one may conclude that easy, natural delivery, free of racking pain, depends upon the following causes:

First — a power of expulsion displayed by the longitudinal fibers without meeting resistance from the circular fibers.

Second — the setting of the longitudinal fibers in motion by the local nerves, and the halting of the action of the nerves connected with the circular fibers, so that these fibers remain in their natural state, without tension.

Third — the relaxing of the fibers of the middle layer around the vessels between the expelling pangs, so that the blood may be renewed and the dregs and deposits produced by muscular action carried off.

Thus delivery is made easy by a willed, conscious act depending upon the expectant mother herself, by which she is enabled to escape what used to terrify her of pain — pain that stirred her delicate, deeply impressionable feelings with the tales of her neighbors and companions and the horror of childbirth they pictured, a horror embodied by fancy and swollen by fear.

• The smile, in "La Gioconda" — its wonder lies in its rendering, not in the original of its loveliness. And so it is with beauty, in literature: it need not be, in itself, a thing of beauty.
"Amin Nakhle"