What’s important to know about the inlet is that it is wider left to right than it is deep from front to back. Movements 1-3 all have to do with the pelvic inlet - the opening portion of the pelvis, from the baby’s perspective. The baby moves down the birth canal, rotating and flexing its head to match the widest opening of the pelvis along the way until it is born. I would summarize of the Cardinal Movements of Labor as: I’ll use the seven just to be more thorough in sharing what I have learned, but feel free to group them as you want - the point is for you to understand, not to get answers right on a test. Learning about what the baby does in this stage reminds me of the precision and athleticism of someone navigating an underwater cave (probably influenced by our recent viewing of “ Thirteen Lives”, an amazing film about the rescue of the Thai soccer team stuck in a flooded cave ).Ī common description of what happens in the second stage is described by the phrase “Cardinal Movements of Labor.” Some sources I have found say there are four movements, some say seven. The second stage of labor is an incredible process! Essentially after the cervix is dilated enough, the baby has to make its way through the pelvis via rotations, flexion, and extension. My understanding of what happens in this stage (see above) was not wrong, it was just too simple. After two hours of pushing (which is a totally normal amount of time to push) and the doctor exhorting me to “get angry” for the final pushes, our baby girl made her way into the world! What happens in the second stage of labor? What made this second stage of labor more emotionally trying than the first was my own lack in understanding of what was going on with my body. After 1.5 hours of pushing, I wasn’t sure if I could do it - the next push felt like the first and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it up. Our doula, the nurses, the doctor all affirmed how great I was progressing, but internally I wanted milestones, expectations, markers of said progress. Although pushing was physically “easier” in that I didn’t feel like I was fighting the contractions, but working with them, I felt like it was harder to know if I was making progress. I had prepared for the difficulty of the first stage of labor, of getting to 10cm unmedicated, and figured pushing would be the easy part. I am sure we learned and read about what happens in the second stage of labor, but all I could really remember at the end of this course was that is was the pushing stage, that I should stop pushing when baby is actually emerging to avoid more serious tearing, and that the baby helps wiggle their way out. We took a 12-week childbirth education course as a couple when we were pregnant with our first daughter.
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