PREGNANT WOMAN ANATOMY - What’s Going On In There

Are you wondering what's going on inside of your pregnant belly? Hey, hey mom! It's Education Stork here, Midwife Kyra. As a midwife, I believe in truly natural birth because I know that it makes for better birth experiences. So if you want to learn a little bit more about that, you're going to want to subscribe to my channel because I know you're going to believe in it too. Today we're going to talk about the anatomy of pregnancy. This is the uterus. If you see it on here, this is basically the baby's house. This is what holds the baby inside. Actually, it's facing this way. This is what holds the baby inside of our belly. And so when you're seeing your health care practitioner, you're noticing every week that they're measuring your belly. What they're measuring is a term called fundal height. And fundus is just a fancy name for the top of the uterus. What's really cool about this is that at about 20 weeks of pregnancy, your fundus, or the top of your uterus, will be at the level of your belly button. But as your pregnancy progresses, it actually is going to gain a centimeter for every week that you are pregnant. So at 40 weeks, you'll be 40 centimeters. So let's look at the entire anatomy here. So obviously, this is our pelvis. This is our uterus. This is our baby's house. Right here, what you're seeing is the cervix extending out into the vagina, which you've probably seen here. Again, this is the vagina going into the cervix. And when we're doing a vaginal exam, we're actually going through the vagina up to the cervix. Our cervix is just the part of the lower uterine segment that extends into the vagina. And so when we're doing a vaginal exam, as you may have seen in our vaginal exam video, we're actually going through the vagina into the cervix to do a vaginal exam. And if you watch the video, you'll know that you'll go from 0 to 10 centimeters. And this is what's dilating right here is the actual cervix, not the vagina. Behind the cervix is going to be an amniotic sac. This is where, this is the sac that holds the baby. So when you open up and go inside of the uterus, the first thing you're going to see is our baby's head. Let's pass that. And we pull the whole baby out of the uterus so we can get a look at the inside. And now you can get a really good visual of the entire amniotic sac with the maternal side of the placenta, which connects to your uterus, and see kind of what the baby looks like on the inside here. So I want you to picture the amniotic sac very much like a balloon. And so within this balloon is amniotic fluid. And believe it or not, babies actually make amniotic fluid through urine. And so I was talking about this the other day, and I know it sounds a little bit gross, but guys, we all did it, that, you know, babies make amniotic fluid from drinking amniotic fluid, and then peeing, and then drinking amniotic fluid, and peeing, and eventually that's how we get our amniotic fluid. That's how amniotic fluid gets inside of the sac. And when your water breaks, this is when the amniotic sac actually ruptures. Fluid leaks out of the cervix, out of the vagina, and your water is broken. That's where the water breaking comes from. And so let's talk about what's inside of the uterus. So obviously we have the baby inside of the uterus connected to the placenta through the umbilical cord. So again, if this is the maternal side that is connecting to the mother's uterus, on the inside we have baby's side of the placenta with the umbilical cord connected to the baby. Now believe it or not, baby and mom's blood never actually mix during a healthy pregnancy, and that there's a scientific process, long story short, that just takes mother's oxygen and puts it through the placenta, through the umbilical cord to the baby, and then baby gets rid of the waste through the umbilical cord through vessels back into the placenta, and it goes to the mother. But their blood never actually mixes, which is really neat. And so this process of the placenta transferring nutrients to and from the baby through the umbilical cord is how baby breathes while baby's in the womb. If you guys have any questions, I want you to post them in the comments below. Otherwise, if you want to watch a video about how the uterus works and how labor hurts, I have a video for that I'll link to you right here. Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next Midwife Monday. Bye-bye.