A beautiful description of transition from Peggy Vincent Midwife and Authoress. Thank you Peggy. Not a new one, but about 2000 people have joined since I 1st posted it, so here is a re-post: Dawn at Birth Newborns, in their first moment of life, present quite a range of colors. Pink is great, but not too common. Bluish is most common and entirely normal. Gray is not so great; a gray baby may require what we call “jump starting,” which can include brisk rubbing (like a mother cat licking her kittens with a raspy tongue), blowing in the baby’s face to cause a gasp, free-falling (letting the baby drop an inch or two to produce a startle reflex), flick to the soles of the feet, firm rubbing up and down the spine… White – pale ashen white, drained of all color – these are the rare babies that will probably need some devoted attention to make the transition from water babies to air breathers. But here’s a cool thing that you may never have seen...and although I’ve probably seen it more times than I can count, I’ve only really and truly “noticed” it on perhaps 3-4 occasions: the second or two it takes a typical baby to change from blue to pink in color. In the uterus, the baby is bluish. The lungs (full of fluid) aren’t providing oxygen; that’s the job of the placenta, so fetal blood doesn’t need to go to the lungs. Therefore, there is a vessel in unborn babies that allows its blood to bypass the lungs (the ductus arteriosus). A small amount of blood gets to the lungs, just enough to nourish them and allow them to develop properly. But most of it zips right on past and heads down the aorta without stopping off at the lungs to refuel. Partially de-oxygenated blood is present normally in the unborn baby’s body, so they are a bit more blue than pink in color until they begin to use their lungs and initiate breathing. That first breath expands the lungs, alters the pulmonary pressure, and starts the extraordinary and complex process of ducts and vessels shutting when they were previously open, and open when they were previously closed…and the baby transitions from fetal circulation to newborn circulation. SO! The color change starts right at the level of the heart, and it takes only a second or two. If you blink, you will miss it. BUT WATCH FOR THIS sometime: A blushing pink light glowing like the pre-dawn sky flushes across the baby’s chest at nipple level, and in the twinkling of an eye it spreads up toward the head and down the torso to the legs, like watching dawn – a mirror image as it’s going both up and down at the same time - on a fast-forward video. It’s so fast, it might take you years to really witness it…but keep trying. Magic.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 06:44:20 +0000
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