✓ True and false about the techniques for initiating childbirth

Fonte: shutterstock

The term of the pregnancy is approaching and the baby bump begins to get very heavy. Here you are thinking: there will be some method for to speed up the time and facilitate childbirth? Several 'techniques' have been suggested to you: floors, stairs, sex ... But how much scientific basis do these popular beliefs have?

We asked Stefano Bianchi, head of Obstetrics at the San Giuseppe Hospital in our city and professor at the State University.

7 PHOTOS

True and false about the techniques for initiating childbirth

go to the gallery

Cleaning the house, drinking castor oil, going up and down the stairs, taking a nice hot bath or waiting for the full moon: at the end of pregnancy, mothers-to-be will ...

1 The full moon

There is no scientific evidence that during the full moon there is an increase in births. It is true, however, that there is a time of year in which more births are given, and it is spring.

The motivation? Could it be that the hot spirits wake up in the heat or maybe that the greatest number of weddings are celebrated in the summer and as it happens after nine months many bellies reach the finish line?

2. Wash the floors

There are many women who, at the end of gestation, get busy doing household chores or try to tire themselves out more than usual, in the belief that they are starting the contractions.

Well, if done while labor is still far away, they are only for interrupt the stillness of the fetus with excessive physical exertion; at most they can give way to the so-called prodromal period, with preparatory contractions which, as we have seen, however, can last up to ten days.

If, on the other hand, the times are ripe, they can make their contribution to stimulating contractile activity. But is it worth getting tired right now that the tour de force of childbirth awaits us?

3. Walk up and down the stairs

The same is true: certain activities, if too intense, can sensitize the uterine muscles and possibly induce contractions, which only at the end of pregnancy can have a real effectiveness. Otherwise they only serve to tire the mother, who in itself, with the weight of the belly, is more affected by physical effort.

4. Having sex

That sexual intercourse can help start labor has its foundation: in the sperm there are a fair amount of prostaglandins, produced by the seminal vesicles. Precisely these prostaglandins should be considered as responsible for the "favoring" activity attributed to sexual intercourse.

This activity occurs only if the conditions for receiving the message carried by the prostaglandins exist at the level of the uterine neck and uterus. The reports will therefore be more effective in women with already soft and partially smoothed cervix.

5. Drink castor oil

Castor oil has the function of stimulating intestinal activity, which could actually consequently induce uterine contractile activity. It could be useful, of course, but it is also true that a nice vegetable puree can produce the same effect, which certainly has a less unpleasant taste than castor oil!

6. Take a warm bath

A hot bath, with a water temperature of 37-38 ° C, is part of the natural methods for contain the pain of uterine contractions, as well as warm cloths on the lower back and abdomen or massages on the belly: these are all relaxing practices, but are not used to trigger contractions.

(Original article from July 2022)