Pain of Labor is mostly in Cervix
By Danell Swim
April 11, 2008
Childbirth is painful, yet scientists are still somewhat in the dark about what actually causes the pain. A new doctoral thesis from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet now shows where this pain comes from and opens the way to the development of improved methods of pain relief.
In her thesis, obstetrician Berith Karlsson Tingåker has examined the source of pain during childbirth and how uterine sensitivity to pain changes during pregnancy. Her results show that labour pains mainly derive from the cervix, where the number of pain-related nerve fibres and receptors is much greater than in the uterus at full-term pregnancy.
Her thesis also shows that uterine pain sensitivity differs markedly between pregnant and non-pregnant women. In the latter, the entire uterus is pain-sensitive, while in the former, the pain-sensitive nerve fibres disappear almost completely from the main body of the uterus, but remain in the cervix.
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