Alright. So female anatomy is supported by a series of ligaments. And the largest of these is called the broad ligament, and the broad ligament has 3 parts to it. So it has the mesometrium, mesosalpinx, and mesovarium, and luckily for us, it actually has a very intuitive naming convention. So if you look at our image here, all of these terms in blue boxes are part of our broad ligament, and we're going to start over here with our mesometrium. And you guys remember that "metrium" means uterus, so this is the part of the broad ligament that will be supporting the uterus laterally or on the side. You can see that here and here. So it's basically up against the uterine body there. Next up, we have our mesosalpinx, and "salpinx" means tube. So this is the part of the broad ligament that is supporting the uterine tube. You can see that here in this kind of lighter blue color directly underneath those uterine tubes. And then finally, we have our mesovarium, and "ovarian" refers to the ovary. So this is the part of the broad ligament that supports the ovary specifically, and you can see that in this dark blue here and here, those kind of little portions of the ligament. So I want you to think of the broad ligament as kind of like shrink-wrap. That's basically going to come together and cover the uterus, the uterine tubes, and the ovary and kind of hold them all together and also help to anchor and suspend them again laterally to the sides of the abdomen. And one thing I want you to note also, as we go forward, is that for any structure that is supporting the ovary specifically, we have put it in a box with a dotted line around it. So mesovarium, this green box, and this yellow box are all going to be structures that support the ovaries, whereas the boxes with a solid outline are all going to be supporting the uterus and the uterine tube, so just keep that in mind as we go through these.
Alright. So now we're going to move over to this purple box down here, and this is our round ligament. So the round ligament is shown here and here in purple, and this ligament is going to be anchoring the uterus to the anterior body wall or to the front of the body. And you can actually see this very nicely in pregnant people because as the uterus grows and moves upward into the abdominal cavity, that round ligament stretches quite a bit, and pregnant people often experience something called round ligament pain as a result of that stretching. You can kind of think of how the round ligament goes with those round pregnant bellies to help you remember that.
Alright. Moving to this yellow box here, we are looking at the ovarian ligament, which is depicted here and here in yellow. And the ovarian ligament is going to be anchoring the ovary to the uterus. And then finally, we have these ligaments in green here and here, and these are called the suspensory ligament. And the suspensory ligaments are going to be suspending the ovary laterally to the pelvic wall as well and kind of helping to anchor it and hold it in place on either side there.
Alright. So those are the major support structures of the female anatomy, and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye bye.