27 Mar 09 SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, REPRODUCTION: WHAT IS AN EMBRYO? WHAT’S A FOETUS? WHAT IS A MISCARRIAGE? WHAT IS A STILL BIRTH?
After an ovum has been fertilized and plants itself in the uterus, it begins the nine-month-long process of developing into a baby. For the first three months, it is referred to as an embryo. After three months, it is called a foetus.
What is a miscarriage? What is a still birth?
When an embryo or foetus dies, it is expelled from the mother’s uterus and this is called a miscarriage. Most miscarriages happen during the first three months of pregnancy. It is unusual for a woman to miscarry after three months, but it does happen. Doctors aren’t always sure why a miscarriage has happened, but usually the embryo or foetus has a defect or problem in its development that makes it impossible for it to survive. Having a miscarriage doesn’t usually affect a woman’s chances of having a normal baby in the future.
Still birth means that the baby is born dead. In some cases the baby has died during the birth process; in other cases the baby has died in the womb before birth. Sometimes the doctor can pin-point a defect in the baby that caused the death, but at other times the reason for the still birth remains a mystery. Fortunately, miscarriages after the third month of pregnancy and still births are rare. Most women have normal pregnancies and give birth to healthy babies.
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Tags: Men’s Health
27 Mar 09 SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, REPRODUCTION: WHAT IS A CAESAREAN SECTION?
If for one reason or another a baby can’t be born in the normal way, the doctor does an operation called a Caesarean section. The woman is anaesthetized so she can’t feel anything from her waist down. Then the doctor makes an incision in her abdomen and uterus and removes the baby from her body by lifting it out through the incision. Afterwards, the incision is sutured shut. Babies born by Caesarean section are usually perfectly healthy.
There are a number of reasons why a baby might have to be born by Caesarean section. For example, labour may be taking so long that the baby is getting worn out and its heartbeat is slowing down. Or the baby might be in a position that would make normal delivery difficult or impossible. The woman’s cervix might not be dilating properly or her contractions might be too weak to push the baby out. For these or other reasons, the doctor might need to do a Caesarean section.
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Tags: Men’s Health
27 Mar 09 SEXUAL INTERCOURSE, REPRODUCTION: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A BABY IS BORN?
When a baby is ready to be born, the mother goes into what we call ‘labour’. During labour the muscles of the mother’s uterus begin to contract rhythmically and the mother feels a cramping sensation. At first the contractions aren’t very strong and come only once in a while. As labour continues, the contractions become stronger and stronger and come more often. At some point during labour or childbirth the amniotic sac, the bag of fluids inside which the baby grows, breaks open and the woman feels a gushing or leaking of fluid from her vagina. This is often called the ‘breaking of the waters’. If the amniotic sac doesn’t break on its own, the doctor will break it.
During labour the cervix, the lower parts of the uterus, begins to dilate (open up). When the cervix is fully dilated and the contractions are strong and regular, the force of the contractions begins to push the baby out of the uterus, through the cervix, through the vagina and out through the vaginal opening. Most babies are born head first, but some babies come out feet first or with some other part of the body coming first.
The average length of time for labour with a woman’s first baby is about twelve to fourteen hours, and about seven hours with her subsequent pregnancies. However, some women have shorter or longer labours than this. Doctors usually tell women to come to hospital when the contractions are coming regularly, every five minutes. Once the contractions are coming this regularly, it will usually be at least several more hours before the baby is born, but some women have very short labours and occasionally you will hear of a baby being born in a car on the way to the hospital. Sometimes, a woman will have some contractions in the week or so before the baby is born, but this is pre-labour and isn’t considered real labour.
For some women labour and childbirth are very painful; for others there is little or no pain. For most women there is some discomfort, for the contractions have to be very strong in order to push the baby out. Some women practise certain exercises during pregnancy and use breathing techniques during labour that help control the pain. If the pain is too intense, the woman may choose to have an anaesthetic that numbs her from the waist down so she doesn’t feel the pain.
Once labour has progressed to the point where the cervix is fully dilated (opened to about 100 mm or 4 in), the ‘pushing stage’ begins. During this stage the mother, if she hasn’t been anaesthetized, can help to bring the baby out by pushing along with the contractions. Even if she can’t help push, the contractions alone are usually enough to push the baby out into the world. This pushing stage usually lasts for one to three hours with a first pregnancy and for about half an hour with subsequent pregnancies, but it may be shorter or longer than this.
During the pushing stage, the baby begins to move out of the uterus and through the cervix into the vagina. When the entire top of the baby’s head is visible at the vaginal opening, it usually takes only a few more contractions to push the baby entirely out into the world.
When a baby is born, it has a cord, known as the umbilical cord, attached to its tummy. The other end of this cord is attached to the placenta. The placenta is a special organ that develops inside the uterus during pregnancy to bring blood and nourishment from the mother to the baby. The placenta usually comes out within a half-hour after the baby. The doctor then cuts the cord and disposes of it and the placenta. The cord is cut within a short distance of the baby’s tummy and is clamped or tied. By the time the baby is a couple of weeks old, the cord above the clamp or knot will have dried up and fallen off by itself.
After the birth, the doctor or nurse checks the baby and may clean it up a bit before giving it to its mother to hold. The boys and girls in our classes get a big kick out of hearing about their own births. You might ask your mother to tell you about her labour with you.
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Tags: Men’s Health
27 Mar 09 WHY ANOTHER SEX ARTICLE? WHY A ‘FAMILY, ARTICLE OF LOVE AND SEX?
Because many sex articles concentrate on people as if all that mattered were their genitals. This is ill-advised. Physical sex has been greatly over-emphasised in modern Western Society. The mood is now right for a article that looks at sex and sexuality in a wider context and this involves concepts of reason, loving, caring and togetherness. Far too many books have emphasised the ‘I’m the most important person in the world’ approach to the subject. Love and sex in reality involve other people’s lives and do so very intimately.
With the coming of AIDS more and more people are looking to their existing relationships to answer their needs for love and sex rather than throwing in the towel and starting again. This book helps make this possible by encouraging understanding, tolerance and flexibility.
Why a ‘family, book of love and sex?
Because our individual sexuality starts to express itself the day we are born. We need to understand the sexual components of life from birth to old age so that we can be more effective, happy and fulfilled human beings and parents and prevent our children from suffering from many of the problems we have as adults. We all want what is best for our children yet which of us is equipped to provide it in today’s changing and complex society?
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Tags: Men’s Health
27 Mar 09 INTRODUCTION
Sexuality is a vast subject covering many fields of study. Genitality, with which it is usually confused, is only a small part of it, yet sex books and sex education tend to concentrate on this aspect of it.
This is understandable because the anatomical differences between the sexes, and especially the genital differences, are the subject of endless fascination and interest from childhood onwards. In our western culture we put so many prohibitions on interest in our genitals and genitality that there is a danger of becoming absorbed with the topic to the exclusion of the more important aspects of sexuality in our relationships and lives.
Men and women are highly complex physical, emotional and psychological beings and to ignore the love, the feelings and the relationships that go hand in hand with genitality is like driving a car with only one wheel. The result is the same — a dangerous imbalance. For many people the sexual aspects of their lives are less fulfilling than they should or could be and they end up passing on their hang-ups, wrong perceptions and misunderstandings about sex and sexuality to their children.
As a culture we try to overcome our natural interest in but unnatural emphasis on the genitals by talking a lot about love and most readers would agree that if men and women could love each other perfectly the world would be a very different place. In a sense if we can love another human being perfectly we are half-way towards loving everyone and the world needs love more than ever before. The sort we need is not the vague love that teenagers feel for all mankind but rather a mature, practical and real love for another real human being.
Real love is in short supply and many people, because of their upbringing, do not love themselves enough to be able to love another person. Yet others are so obsessed with themselves that they are unable to allow another person to intrude in any significant way. Men and women in all kinds of relationships often feel they do not love each other very much and some even hate each other. Some men dislike all women and some women, all men. What a terrible state of affairs to have got ourselves into in a so-called Christian society that should be based on love.
Unfortunately, the man-woman relationship has many enemies. To the extent that the state or religions demand that their interests be given prior consideration and that the man-woman relationship itself should be governed by them, they intrude on and may even damage the relationship. Both, of course, do so ‘accidentally’ under the guise of trying to further the relationship.
In fact, for a supposedly caring society based on Judaeo-Christian morals, we seem to be doing rather badly in this area. Premarital pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases are on the increase in spite of efforts to curb them; over a third of marriages end in divorce; one in eight children live in one-parent families; most parents have problems in dealing with their teenagers’ emerging sexuality; and depression, the most widespread psychological illness of our society, is not only commoner than ever but often has a psychosexual basis. There is certainly no room for complacency. But what can the average family hope to do to redress the balance?
Obviously a way to change things is to shield our children from the negative cultural influences that we suffered, but this is not easy because we as parents are steeped in them.
Is to look at love and sex from the cradle to the grave and, with the benefit of knowledge of both family and psychosexual medicine, weave a picture of interlinking complexity that shows how a child grows up to become a sexual person. We then follow this person through life and look at other major milestones along the way. The subject is enormous and we have drawn on research from all over the world to add to our own clinical experience. After all, no one person can have seen it all and, in the final analysis, everyone is different.
In this completely revised edition, we have brought all the facts and figures up to date and have taken the AIDS epidemic into account. Because we have had to be brief on very important subjects we have tried to concentrate on what families most want to know and have tried to be as practical as possible. After all, unless you have had a wide experience of teenagers and talked to them about their intimate fears, problems, loves, hates and aspirations you can’t really know how your own child fits into the picture of ‘normality’. Many parents end up feeling hopelessly confused, especially in our fast-changing world.
Being a parent is probably more difficult today than ever before because the conflicts within society are so great, and the last thing that most parents need is yet another sex manual to tell them and their family how to behave genitally. Clinical experience repeatedly confirms that although genital sex can help cement a relationship in troubled times, sex nearly always looks after itself in a good relationship. Many people with so-called sex problems have personality or interrelationship problems deep down – the sex problem is simply the obvious symptom of which they complain.
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Tags: Men’s Health
