Functions
Further information: Uterine contractionThe myometrium stretches (the smooth muscle cells expand in both size and number) during pregnancy to allow for the harboring of the pregnancy, and contracts in a coordinated fashion, via a positive feedback effect on the "Ferguson reflex"), during the process of labor. After delivery the myometrium contracts to expel the placenta and reduce blood loss. Thus a positive benefit to early breast feeding is a natural stimulation of this reflex to reduce blood loss and facilitate a swift return to prepregnancy uterine and abdominal muscle tone.
Read more about this topic: Myometrium
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that there are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)