Shock of birth is the transient depression of muscle tone and

deep tendon reflex The stretch reflex (myotatic reflex), or more accurately "muscle stretch reflex", is a muscle contraction in response to stretching within the muscle. The reflex functions to maintain the muscle at a constant length. The term deep tendon reflex is ...

es that occurs in

newborn An infant or baby is the very young offspring of human beings. ''Infant'' (from the Latin word ''infans'', meaning 'unable to speak' or 'speechless') is a formal or specialised synonym for the common term ''baby''. The terms may also be used to ...

s after

birth Birth is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring, also referred to in technical contexts as parturition. In mammals, the process is initiated by hormones which cause the muscular walls of the uterus to contract, expelling the f ...

. In 70% of newborns, it lasts less than 24 hours, and in 84.3% less than 48 hours. Its presence is not affected by whether birth happened through

vaginal delivery A vaginal delivery is the birth of offspring in mammals (baby, babies in humans) through the vagina (also called the "birth canal"). It is the most common method of childbirth worldwide. It is considered the preferred method of delivery, with l ...

or cesarean delivery. The term was introduced in 1960.Escardó F, Coriat LF. (1960). Development of postural and tonic patterns in the newborn infant. Pediatr Clin North Am. 7(3):511-25.

References

{{Human-repro-stub Childbirth Neonatology