Functions of Amniotic Fluid
Amniotic fluid is "inhaled" and "exhaled" by the fetus. It is essential that fluid be breathed into the lungs in order for them to develop normally. Swallowed amniotic fluid also creates urine and contributes to the formation of meconium. As well, amniotic fluid protects the developing baby by cushioning against blows to the mother's abdomen, allows for easier fetal movement, promotes muscular/skeletal development.
Read more about this topic: Amniotic Fluid
Famous quotes containing the words functions of, functions and/or fluid:
“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)
“Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is a mischievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt to themselves to it as they may; but in proportion as a man has anything in him divine, the firmament flows before him and takes his signet and form.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)