Although it's not as cool as x-rays of video game controllers, a hospital in Berlin performed an MRI scan of a live birth.
The exam was done in order to see why labor stalls and why women require c-sections. Of course, we already know that supine labor (pushing a baby out against gravity, on your back with your pelvis up) can stall labor. I would venture a scientific guess that it stalls 55% more often if you're crammed into an MRI machine - even an custom birth scanner.
I'm curious why every news source has flipped the woman onto her belly. That's her spine and tailbone above the baby there. Conversely, some of the images are oriented vertically. A step in the right direction, perhaps, but I doubt it happened that way! I haven't seen any supine images, which has to be how it really happened.
I'm thinking it won't reveal very much on why labor stalls, if I'm right in my assumption that labor stalls for positional (anti-gravity laboring) and hormonal (stress hormones inhibiting oxytocin, the labor hormone) reasons, as well as poor clinical decision-making like forcing labor (or non-labor) by induction and augmentation. I'd also think the mechanism of labor, the descent, is probably different when you're laboring in the more upright positions humans have naturally tended to labor in over the millenia. Laying flat on your back with no regard for spinal alignment or pelvis positioning or the weight of gravity does not strike me as an accurate way to do an imaging study of birth.
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The exam was done in order to see why labor stalls and why women require c-sections. Of course, we already know that supine labor (pushing a baby out against gravity, on your back with your pelvis up) can stall labor. I would venture a scientific guess that it stalls 55% more often if you're crammed into an MRI machine - even an custom birth scanner.
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| Source: Daily Mail |
I'm thinking it won't reveal very much on why labor stalls, if I'm right in my assumption that labor stalls for positional (anti-gravity laboring) and hormonal (stress hormones inhibiting oxytocin, the labor hormone) reasons, as well as poor clinical decision-making like forcing labor (or non-labor) by induction and augmentation. I'd also think the mechanism of labor, the descent, is probably different when you're laboring in the more upright positions humans have naturally tended to labor in over the millenia. Laying flat on your back with no regard for spinal alignment or pelvis positioning or the weight of gravity does not strike me as an accurate way to do an imaging study of birth.
- The Daily Mail Online: Doctors produce first-ever MRI scan of baby at the moment of birth
- Medgadget: MRI Used to Visualize Live Birth
- The Unnecesarean: Woman Gives Birth in an MRI Machine