Medical Terms During Your Pregnancy

There are medical terms used during your pregnancy that you may not hear from a Southern Gentleman swishing Brandy in his snifter nor pulling from the rings of smoke from his Caribbean Cigar. However, I can assure you that some sounds are gracious and predicate the slang terms you may have heard, while others harbor the mystique of the Voodoo Princess as she makes her evening rounds through the Oaks of the Estate.

As the abdomen begins to swell and movement is felt beneath, "quickening", it's called, you and your husband or another of your children may notice a darkened line straight from your breast bone to the sensitivities of the pubic bone. The medical term for this line is the Linea Nigra.

Should your physician be so kind as to loan you a stethoscope, you will become enthralled with a listening adventure. First you may feel your baby's butt or head or elbow. You will hear a thump, thump, thump that will have your gracious ears to themselves as you listen to the dawning of a new life. But; let us not be hasty. There is a sound close to the baby's heartbeat, and it resembles the heartbeat; but, there is a more slushing sound. This is the "uterine soufflé". It is like a sound unlike any other, caused by the blood coursing through the placenta, running ever so close to the blood of the mother. They don't mix, but they exchange nutrients and waste. Never again will this baby's blood run so close to it's mother. And when death takes the mother, you can say," I got something of my moma's that nobody can steal. You lift your shirt with pride and you point to your umbilicus, or belly button...that used to be the cord that tied you to moma. No matter how she left you; hungry on the street and eating out of garbage cans; or, a precious, happy childhood, there is nothing on God's Green Earth more precious than moma.

There are more unpleasant marks that you may be familiar with as, "stretch marks". The skin is able to expand as it is able to contract although it seems the latter takes eighteen months. The correct term for these intrusive embellishments are, "Striae Gravidarium".

When all is said and done, a woman is as divinely beautiful as she can possibly be when she is with child. It makes me very sad, indeed to think of the many thousands of infertile women who will not feel the faces in the room turn to her; the gentle whispers of positive thought that go along with a mother and her newborn. There is indeed a glow. It may shine only for a brief moment in time in the mother's life; but please capture it for posterity. God knows what he does; and he does it well.

Shall I spoil the sweetest of moments when these terrible labor pains begin...the breaking of the water (amniotic fluid). The baby's head moving into the birth canal, which is called the "lightning". The gentle taps from the mother to the husband's face becoming torrid slaps that blame him for this situation and occur during and upon arrival at the hospital. The gentle rehearsals everyone has prepared for , for the eventful day and the role of each individual trying to remember their requirements; but, deviated by the seeker of lost souls that may devour you each upon sight...or, perhaps it's just the little pregnant woman who feels better at all the attention; when to breathe; when not to breathe; perhaps a little Demerol; and, that brackish man who dared to call himself a husband just a few short contractions ago. Could this be the same gentle woman who allows her sweet child to suckle.