Labor Saver

A woman's uterus begins contracting three months before she is born. It ceases to pulsate only when her ability to bear children ceases. During that long period she becomes aware of her internal throbbing only when she is quick with child. The sensation becomes uncomfortable only as the woman's term nears its end. The end of pregnancy is, for the average woman with her first child, 18 hours of painful ordeal--16 hours during which her child struggles from its nest, 1 hour 45 minutes while it wriggles into independent existence, and 15 minutes while the new mother rids herself of fetal accessories. By this time the woman is very tired, often unconscious. The muscular interactions of the parturient woman and her child during delivery are highly important to the well-being of both. The more obstetricians can know about what is going on the more wisely they can help nature. Last week Dr. Samuel Mayer Dodek, 32, of Washington, offered obstetricians a neat little device which gives a description of a woman's every significant movement during parturition. He invented it while earning his M. A. degree in obstetrics & gynecology at Western Reserve University. Details of the Dodek device appeared in Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics. Essentially it consists of a plunger which pushes against the soft rubber lid of an air container. Every movement of the plunger changes the air pressure in the container. The changing pressure agitates a pen which writes a zigzag line on a moving sheet of paper. An aluminum tripod holds the device so that the exposed end of the plunger rests gently yet firmly near the patient's navel. For there is where she contracts and bulges most. There is no discomfort. Says Dr. Dodek: "The entire apparatus with its tripod support rests on the evenly undulating movements of the abdomen in the intervals between contractions similar to the way in which a moored skiff rests upon the ripples of a calm lake." He finds that women like to watch the jerks of the pen. Above all it tells them when they are about to get a pain, when they must bear down.-- The Dodek device--he calls it a hysterograph or womb register--has already proved useful to obstetrics. There are a dozen drugs commonly used to save a woman pain and exertion during her labor. The Dodek device indicates just how the uterine musculature reacts to each drug, tells when it is advisable to use one, to discard another.

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