Word: pitocin
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...oxytocin-deficient among us, the hormone is commercially available on the Internet - new mothers sometimes use it to trigger the release of breast milk (and nearly half of all women who give birth in the U.S. intravenously receive Pitocin, a commercial version of oxytocin, to induce labor). But some entrepreneurs are already touting oxytocin as a shyness cure. One website hawks a "trust elixir," an oxytocin-laced perfume that its manufacturers say will make its wearers seem more trustworthy to others - and vice versa...
...case, we waited another hour without any progress before deciding to undergo the 12-min. procedure. My wife felt immediate relief. Her uterus kept contracting, and with the help of a little Pitocin, a medication to speed up labor, we were in business. She was able to get some rest without pain while her body continued to push the baby down and open up her cervix. Less than three hours later, her doctor gave us the news we had been waiting to hear: we were ready to have a baby. My wife pushed hard, feeling pressure but no pain...
...that each deli very has its own "natural pace," births at the hospital are expected to follow the contours of an idealized graph of how labor is supposed to progress. When a woman departs from the curve, doctors turn to preordained procedures. They may speed things up by administering Pitocin, a labor-inducing drug, or by artificially rupturing the amniotic membranes. They may order the mother to "Push, you lazy female!" when she does not feel the natural urge to push. And after she has pushed vainly for several hours, they may decide she is exhausted and perform a caesarean...
Page's method involves testing for a substance called pitocinase, an enzyme found in a pregnant woman's blood. Pitocinase neutralizes pitocin, a mysterious pituitary hormone which seems to play a part in contracting the muscles of the uterus. As pregnancy advances, the amount of pitocinase in the blood increases at an exactly predictable rate. By measuring the concentration of pitocinase, Page determines the stage of pregnancy. His measurement method: a strip of uterus from an elderly female rat is suspended in a solution containing pitocin and a patient's blood sample. If the patient...