first cry. Proud and happy to give life to a
new human being, which she hopes soon to suckle and carry in her arms,
she cheerfully bears all the inconveniences and pains of pregnancy and
childbirth. The latter is actually painful, for in spite of all that
nature does to relax the pelvis and render it elastic, to dilate the
neck of the womb, the vagina and the vulva, the passage of the
enormous head of a human infant through all these relatively narrow
apertures is extremely difficult (Figs. 22 and 23). The passage is
forced by the powerful contractions of the muscles of the womb.
However, they do not always succeed by themselves, and in this case
the accoucheur is obliged to apply the forceps to extract the head of
the child. Very often the neck of the womb, the vagina or the perineum
(the part situated between the anus and the vulva) become torn during
labor, and this may lead later on to disorders such as prolapse of the
womb, etc.; disorders which may last through life.

When the child is born, the umbilical cord (that is the transformed
allantois, Fig. 23) cut, and the placenta extracted, the connecting
nutrition and respiration between the child and its mother are
suddenly interrupted. Nourished hitherto by its mother's blood through
the placenta and the vessels of the umbilical cord which supplied the
necessary oxygen, the infant is suddenly obliged to breathe and feed
for itself. Its lungs, hitherto inactive, expand instantaneously under
the nervous influence produced by the blood saturated with carbonic
acid, and the first cry is produced. Thus commences individual
respiration. Several hours later the cessation of maternal nutrition
causes hunger, and this the reflex movements of suction, and the child
takes the breast. During this time the empty womb contracts strongly
and retracts enormously in a few days. The increase of blood produced
by the maternal organism, by its adaptation to the nutrition of the
embryo, is then employed in the production of milk in the breasts or
lactiferous glands, which were already well developed during
pregnancy.

=Suckling. Maternity.=--The mother is instinctively disposed to suckle
her child as the infant is to suck. At the end of four to six weeks,
the womb has almost completely regained its former size.

In savage races suckling at the breast lasts for two years or more. It
is useless to mention here to what point the capacity for suckling and
the production of milk have dim