Before giving birth to a child, a woman must go through different stages during labor and childbirth. These stages are three and consist of: the first stage begins with the onset of the contraction and gradual effacement and dilatation of the cervix. While the cervix dilates the contractions are longer and stronger. The last part of active labor which is the end of the first stage the cervix dilates to 10 centimeters. This last part is called transition.

Afterwards the second stage of labor begins after the full dilatation and ends after the birth of the baby. This stage is also known as the pushing stage.

The final stage begins after the birth of the baby and involves the separation and the delivery of the placenta.

For women that are facing the first birth labor and delivery lasts about 15 hours. There are many cases of women that give birth in more than 20 hours. Few of them are lucky and deliver more quickly. For women who gave birth before the average period for a delivery is around 8 hours.

The premier phase in the first stage is called early labor. This phase consists of regular contraction and progressively cervix dilatation. This stage occurs at 37 weeks after the conception. If the contractions occur before this time the future mothers should ask a specialist that can determine if it is preterm labor. As we said before the contractions begin to be longer and stronger. The contractions might come from ten to ten minutes and might last about 30 seconds. Sometimes these early labor contractions are quite painful.

During this phase women can experience increasing mucousy vaginal discharge which may be tinged with blood. This is a normal thing but if more than a tinge of blood is seen, a doctor should be called.

Active labor is the second phase in the first stage. In this phase contractions become frequent and the cervix begins to dilate faster going from 3-4 centimeters to 10. Toward the end of the active labor the baby might deign to descend.

This phase lasts different from woman to woman. For a woman that has his first baby this phase might last about six hours until she will get to full dilation.

The last part of the active phase is transition. This period marks the transition to the second stage of labor. This phase is the most intense part of the labor because the contractions begin to be stronger, coming about every two or three minutes. This phase might last from a few minutes to a few hours.

Pushing, the second stage comes, after the transition.

In a few minutes after giving birth the uterus begins to contract. The first contraction separates the placenta from the uterine wall. This phase usually lasts a few minutes.

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