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 ing. Instead they began to push and to squeeze the baby out. Usually the baby lies with its head pointing downward toward the tube called the vagina which leads to the outside of the mother's body. The vagina is narrow but it stretches as the baby enters it. Slowly the baby passes from the uterus and into the world, going out by the same opening through which nine months before the sperm had gone in. Some babies need a whole day or more in which to make this journey and some babies are born in a few minutes. Perhaps your mother will tell you how long you took to be born.

The pushing and the stretching that the body must do to help the baby to leave the uterus uses up the mother's strength. It is hard work for her—the doctors call it labor—but she is glad because she knows her baby is being born. She either goes to a hospital or calls a doctor and a nurse to her home. They take care of her and of the new born baby. The doctor cuts the tube through which the food had been going from the mother into the stomach of the baby, and from now on the baby will feed through its mouth.