Introduction
During birth, a variety of complications for mother and/or child can occur. Some of these are easily treatable, but can also be acute emergencies. They affect both the birth process up to the delivery of the child and the postnatal period.
Complications for mother and child can also occur during pregnancy or shortly before birth. The reasons for this are, for example, gestational diabetes, high blood pressure in the mother or pregnancy poisoning. Overall, complications during childbirth are rare, so that most births go off without problems. Deaths of mothers in connection with childbirth are extremely rare in this country.
Complications for the mother
Complications for the mother may occur especially during the afterbirth phase, i.e. when the baby is already born and the afterbirth (placenta, remains of the umbilical cord and egg skins) still has to be born. The placenta should be rejected about 10 to 30 minutes after the birth of the child. Incomplete rejection of the afterbirth can lead to severe blood loss and in the worst case to circulatory failure (see below).
Severe blood loss can also occur if the uterine muscles do not contract or do not contract sufficiently after birth (so-called uterine atony). This can be caused by overstretching of the uterine wall (by very large children or multiples, for example) or malformations of the uterus. A very rare but severe complication for the mother is the so-called uterine rupture, which can occur during pregnancy and during birth.
This involves tears in the wall of the uterus, which are accompanied by sudden severe pain and a large loss of blood. Further complications for the mother are birth injuries. These include injuries to the vagina, labia, vagina, cervix, cervix and very rarely also the pubic symphysis.
A common birth injury is the so-called perineal tear, i.e. an injury to the skin and possibly the muscles between the vagina and the anus. These are classified into different degrees depending on their size and depth and occur in about 20 to 30 percent of all births. In the foreground of the treatment of birth injuries are hemostasis, wound cleansing and suturing of the wound. A very rare complication during birth is amniotic fluid embolism. Amniotic fluid enters the mother’s blood (usually through birth injuries) and sudden blood clotting can lead to respiratory and circulatory failure.
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