Login or join using your favorite social provider

Facebook Twitter Google YAHOO

Join Our Community

Your FREE membership includes:

  • Week-by-week developmental email newsletters
  • Engaging community of mothers & our team of baby experts
  • Money saving baby offers & coupons delivered to your inbox
  • FREE baby samples & coupons, contests, sweepstakes & more!

JOIN NOW

Or login using your EverydayFamily.com account

Email:

Password:

SUBMIT

Forgot Password?

Report a Problem

Worried About Your Child's Potty Mouth? It’s Normal!! Health & Fitness at Home: Toning Your Upper Body First Foods for Baby: What the Nutritionist Says is Best Watch more videos

Scientists Use MRI to Record Human Childbirth

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 by Kim Shannon from Buzzworthy Bulletins

For the first time ever, a live birth was observed with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine as part of a study of how the mother’s pelvis interacts with the fetus during birth; and although this birth took place in 2010, the video was recently made public. Berlin researchers recorded “the active second stage of labor, when the mother starts performing expulsive efforts with the valsalva maneuver.”

I found the video to be educational; however, I’ve decided that this “valsalva maneuver” looks much too easy when displayed in radio-waved, magnetic mode. You can see two visible pushes, first at the 4-second mark and then the final, victorious push at the 22-second mark.

I would give my left boob for a two-push childbirth experience. I was in active labor for over 24 hours with my daughter, 3 of which were spent valsalva-maneuvered style.

There is a grand possibility that the woman in this study spent many additional hours in childbirth and only the final seconds were released to the public. I’m just amazed this study documented the final “downward gliding of the fetal head,” which only happened at the very last second.

Childbirth, from this perspective, looks simple, natural, and painless. You don’t know if she tore, you don’t know if she is screaming in pain, and her body doesn’t look like it’s withering with the get-it-out-of-me-now-or-I-will-turn-into-a-purple-people-eater syndrome.

The human body is capable of amazing feats – this video proves it. Here’s to conception, nine months of incubation and creation, childbirth, and everything else we women are capable of.

Simple. Natural. Painless. Bring it on. 

What did you think of the video?

Home > Blog > Scientists Use MRI to Record Human Childbirth

More to Learn, More to Love
Everyday Extras

EverydayFamily.com offers general information and is for educational purposes only. This information is not a substitute for professional medical, psychiatric or psychological
advice. Nothing on this website should be taken to imply an endorsement of EverydayFamily.com or its partners by any person quoted or mentioned.


Disney Online Moms and Family Portfolio

Forgot Password

Please enter your email address to have your password emailed to you:

SUBMIT

Privacy Policy

By joining the EverydayFamily.com community, you will have access to our active community of mothers just like you, interactive tools, sweepstakes, free baby offers and more! You will also receive customized newsletters tailored specifically to you and special offers directly in your inbox.

Track your baby's development week by week

* Required