About 4 A.M. the
husband of the girl, in great fright, summoned the physician,
saying: "Monsieur le Medecin, il y a quelque chose entre les
jambes de ma femme," and, to Dr. Case's surprise, he found the
head of a child wholly expelled during a profound sleep of the
mother. In twenty minutes the secundines followed. The patient,
who was only twenty years old, said that she had dreamt that
something was the matter with her, and awoke with a fright, at
which instant, most probably, the head was expelled. She was
afterward confined with the usual labor-pains.
Palfrey speaks of a woman, pregnant at term, who fell into a
sleep about eleven o'clock, and dreamed that she was in great
pain and in labor, and that sometime after a fine child was
crawling over the bed. After sleeping for about four hours she
awoke and noticed a discharge from the vagina. Her husband
started for a light, but before he obtained it a child was born
by a head-presentation. In a few minutes the labor-pains returned
and the feet of a second child presented, and the child was
expelled in three pains, followed in ten minutes by the placenta.
Here is an authentic case in which labor progressed to the second
stage during sleep.
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