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    101 Interesting Birth Facts
    101 Interesting Birth Facts
    101 Interesting Birth Facts
    Ebook211 pages1 hour

    101 Interesting Birth Facts

    By Heather Griffin

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    About this ebook

    A fascinating look at many aspects of birth, past and present. Includes jaw dropping true stories such as the 5 year old who had a baby, the woman who gave herself a caesarean with a kitchen knife, and the newborns who fell down the toilet of a moving train on to the tracks. From Queen Mary I and her tragic phantom pregnancies, to the woman with 69 children, a riveting little book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHeather Griffin
    Release dateJun 17, 2013
    ISBN9780992612917
    101 Interesting Birth Facts

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      Book preview

      101 Interesting Birth Facts - Heather Griffin

      Ines Ramirez, a peasant living in a remote area of Mexico, became famous in the year 2000 when she gave herself a caesarean section with a kitchen knife.

      Ramirez had been in agonizing labour on her own for twelve hours. There was no telephone, and her husband was out drinking in the village bar. She already had seven children, but her eighth baby had died during labour, and she was terrified the same thing would happen again. She drank a couple of glasses of strong alcohol, then took around an hour to cut through skin and flesh and pull out a healthy baby boy, cutting the cord with a pair of scissors. Ramirez then passed out. When she awoke she sent one of her children to find help, and was driven to hospital where she later had further surgery to repair any uterine and intestinal damage. She made a full recovery and the baby, Orlando, was fine. However, she stated afterwards that she didn’t advise other women to try the same.

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      Youngest Mother Ever Recorded

      The youngest mother ever recorded was Lina Medina from Lima, Peru who became pregnant at age 5 in 1939. Lina sadly suffered from a hormonal disorder and had started her periods when she was only a baby. Her father was arrested on suspicion of incest but released due to lack of evidence. Lina had a baby boy weighing 6½ pounds by Caesarean section when she was 5 years and 7 months old.

      The baby was named Gerardo after the doctor who treated Lina, and was brought up as if he was Lina’s younger brother. The identity of his father was never confirmed. Gerardo died age 40 from a bone marrow infection, but Lina still lives in Peru with her husband and has another son, born 33 years after Gerardo.

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      Phantom Pregnancy

      Pseudocyesis is the official term for false pregnancy in humans, a condition in which a woman may experience many symptoms common in pregnancy, such as loss of periods, nausea, an enlarged abdomen, and even sometimes produce milk in her breasts. Sufferers from this condition are not faking these symptoms – and they truly believe they are pregnant. Medics believe the physical symptoms can be triggered by a psychological state, for instance if a woman is desperate to conceive; the mind then tricks the body, possibly stimulating the release of certain hormones.

      Queen Mary I suffered two phantom pregnancies. She put on weight, stopped menstruating, and felt nauseous. Mary, her doctors, and the whole of England believed she was pregnant, but the baby never appeared. A year or two later she had a second false pregnancy. The Queen was heartbroken, and felt disgraced. She had wanted children desperately, but sadly died childless.

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      Dog, Cat and Pig Nipples

      Baby dogs all scrabble for the nearest nipple to feed. Cats can’t do this as their sharp claws would hurt both the mother and the other kittens, so each kitten forms an attachment to a particular nipple which it always feeds from.

      Pigs also stick to the same nipple, but the first piglets born choose nipples nearest the mother’s head, as these give the best milk supply; the younger pigs are left with the less efficient lower nipples and therefore often do not grow as well or remain as healthy as the older piglets.

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      Crying

      Although newborn babies may seem to cry a lot, no tears are released until they are about three weeks old. Even then, the tears are minimal, and just enough to keep the eyes moist. Some babies do not produce tears until they are several months old.

      Some people believe this is because tear ducts are not fully developed in a newborn. Other theories state that whilst the initial (basal) tears just moisten the eyes, true tears are only triggered by emotional distress so are not produced until the baby is old enough to experience feelings such as loneliness or fear.

      Tears triggered by emotion have a different chemical composition to the basal tears. Emotional tears contain much greater quantities of potassium and manganese, and also higher levels of prolactin and the adrenocorticotropic hormone which is

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