Smaller Babies.

kneemos

Do you think babies are too big for women's bodies? It's a hell of a chore to carry these things never mind childbirth.
It must be an evolutionary fuk up surly given the ease other animals have in giving birth.

Chucken

kneemos wrote: »

Do you think babies are too big for women's bodies? It's a hell of a chore to carry these things never mind childbirth.
It must be an evolutionary fuk up surly given the ease other animals have in giving birth.

Give us a list of all the mammals you have seen giving birth?

kneemos

Chucken wrote: »

Give us a list of all the mammals you have seen giving birth?

Dogs,Cats,Gerbils,Rabbits,Bizon,Antelope,Giraffe.

Cookie_Monster

kneemos wrote: »

Do you think babies are too big for women's bodies? It's a hell of a chore to carry these things never mind childbirth.
It must be an evolutionary fuk up surly given the ease other animals have in giving birth.

it the size of the skull that presents the problems, a smaller / less developed brain is the only around this which would mean stupider people

kneemos

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

it the size of the skull that presents the problems, a smaller / less developed brain is the only around this which would mean stupider people

More stupid.

NachoBusiness

Women used to give birth with relative ease..

Weston Price, in 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', said that he found that child birth only became difficult for generations that were raised on western diets of refined sugar and grains and moved away from traditional diets. Similar observations have been made by other researchers such as Arnold De Vries in 'Primitive Man and His Food'.

Cookie_Monster

kneemos wrote: »

More stupid.

less intelligent,

ie stupider

Chucken

kneemos wrote: »

Dogs,Cats,Gerbils,Rabbits,Bizon,Antelope,Giraffe.

If I believe you....,women are built to deliver babies

kneemos

NachoBusiness wrote: »

Women used to give birth with relative ease..

Weston Price, in 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', said that he found that child birth only became difficult for generations that were raised on western diets of refined sugar and grains and moved away from traditional diets. Similar observations have been made by other researchers such as Arnold De Vries in 'Primitive Man and His Food'.

The size of a woman's belly at nine months looks totally out of proportion to the rest of her.
You don't see other animals with such massively distended tummies.

Chucken

kneemos wrote: »

The size of a woman's belly at nine months looks totally out of proportion to the rest of her.
You don't see other animals with such massively distended tummies.

Really?

gctest50

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

it the size of the skull that presents the problems............

how bout the rest ?

during an almighty struggle at the 11th hour when his impressive shoulders became stuck,

Because George, weighed a staggering 15lb 7oz when he was born naturally at Gloucester Royal Infirmary, two weeks past his due date.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2301337/What-whopper-At-eye-watering-15lb-7oz-George-thought-biggest-baby-born-naturally-Britain.html

Chucken

gctest50 wrote: »

how bout the rest ?

Once the skull is out, the rest is ok.

Women are tough

I need a definition of "ease" here. It seems to be the word the thread is predicated upon.

Does happen. My friend is a tiny little woman and had to have a ceasaran (spelling?) because her son was basically too big to fit through her pelvis.

My mother had two big sons, like 9lbsers, and I was a tiny 5lb yoke, she said I almost fell out!

A friend of mine had two daughters no problem but them pregnancy with her son I ended up looking after the girls while she spent days in hospital. He was a big baby. Don't put it down to the sex honestly but yes, there are times that babies are too big for the mother. Back in the "old days" they would have died, and probably mother too, but now we have that modern thing going on.

kneemos

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I need a definition of "ease" here. It seems to be the word the thread is predicated upon.

Without the need for assistance and relatively pain free.

Peregrinus

We're a bit of an evolutionary dead end, in this regard. Yes, giving birth for humans is a lot more physically stressful than for most other mammals (and also a lot more dangerous; if we have to give birth unsupported by modern medical technology, the maternal death rate is much higher than for other mammals).

At the same time, we also give birth to much less developed young. A newborn lamb can stand up unaided within fifteen minutes, and walk within an hour; this takes about a year for a newborn human. And, again, without modern technology the death rate among newborn humans is much higher than among other mammals.

So there's a trade-off here; carry the developing infant for as long as possible, so it will be as developed as possible and as strong as possible when it actually has to cope outside the womb, versus give birth to the infant when it is small enough to pass through the birth canal with the minimum of pain and the maximum of safety. We steer an awkward middle ground where we don't achieve either of these things satisfactorily, but also don't fail as badly as we could.

kneemos

kneemos wrote: »

Without the need for assistance and relatively pain free.

two wildly different measures. Which does not bode well for your OP - because you have now made it incumbent upon yourself to show studies of unassisted births AND pain measurement in the two relative subjects.

EITHER of which is a life long pursuit for some people - let alone a relative comparison or merging of the two. So you are really onto a THESIS with this thread. I can not wait to see where it goes

kneemos

[Deleted User] wrote: »

two wildly different measures. Which does not bode well for your OP - because you have now made it incumbent upon yourself to show studies of unassisted births AND pain measurement in the two relative subjects.

EITHER of which is a life long pursuit for some people - let alone a relative comparison or merging of the two. So you are really onto a THESIS with this thread. I can not wait to see where it goes

Good luck with that.I only do hearsay and innuendo.

sexual innuendo I hope. Because that wins just for being funny Smaller Babies eh - no doubt

Chucken

Deleted User wrote: »

sexual innuendo I hope. Because that wins just for being funny Smaller Babies eh - no doubt

twat

magentis

Chucken wrote: »

twat

:eek:

PucaMama

Is there anything they won't blame our diet for?

As another poster said it's the skull size, which is actually bigger to house a larger brain than other animals all made possible by our access to good amounts of food

NachoBusiness wrote:

Women used to give birth with relative ease..

Weston Price, in 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', said that he found that child birth only became difficult for generations that were raised on western diets of refined sugar and grains and moved away from traditional diets. Similar observations have been made by other researchers such as Arnold De Vries in 'Primitive Man and His Food'.

ceadaoin.

kneemos wrote: »

Without the need for assistance and relatively pain free.

The first stage of labour where the cervix is dilating is the most painful part. That would be the same no matter how big the baby is. The second stage where the baby is actually coming out isn't that bad.


Women's bodies are designed to give birth, it's very rare that a vaginal delivery is physically impossible. Yes it hurts but that's the trade off for having large brains.

I don't see what diet has to do with it. Babies heads and women's pelvises have always been that size

Teyla Emmagan

This is why I advocate smoking during pregnancy. Keep the baby weight low and you're laughing.

kneemos

ceadaoin. wrote: »

The first stage of labour where the cervix is dilating is the most painful part. That would be the same no matter how big the baby is. The second stage where the baby is actually coming out isn't that bad.


Women's bodies are designed to give birth, it's very rare that a vaginal delivery is physically impossible. Yes it hurts but that's the trade off for having large brains.

I don't see what diet has to do with it. Babies heads and women's pelvises have always been that size

As I said it's a poor evolutionary design.
Large undeveloped babies that will kill large numbers of women without medical assistance.

kylith

It's a combination of the large skulls needed to carry our large brains, and the fact that our pelvises had to alter shape to accommodate bipedal locomotion..

Akrasia

NachoBusiness wrote: »

Women used to give birth with relative ease..

Weston Price, in 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', said that he found that child birth only became difficult for generations that were raised on western diets of refined sugar and grains and moved away from traditional diets. Similar observations have been made by other researchers such as Arnold De Vries in 'Primitive Man and His Food'.

Bullsh1t

Eugene Norman

[Deleted User] wrote: »

two wildly different measures. Which does not bode well for your OP - because you have now made it incumbent upon yourself to show studies of unassisted births AND pain measurement in the two relative subjects.

EITHER of which is a life long pursuit for some people - let alone a relative comparison or merging of the two. So you are really onto a THESIS with this thread. I can not wait to see where it goes

He just has to compare unassisted human birth mortality with other mammals. In any evolutionary book I have read it's clear that humans have difficult births because of the size of the head compared to the size of the pelvis, and part of the solution to that is humans are born prematurely relative to other animals. Some animals can walk after a day or so.

Eugene Norman

kneemos wrote: »

As I said it's a poor evolutionary design.
Large undeveloped babies that will kill large numbers of women without medical assistance.

It's good evolutionary "design" because the surviving big brained humans were evolutionary fitter than other humans and animals.

Eugene Norman

NachoBusiness wrote: »

Women used to give birth with relative ease..

Weston Price, in 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration', said that he found that child birth only became difficult for generations that were raised on western diets of refined sugar and grains and moved away from traditional diets. Similar observations have been made by other researchers such as Arnold De Vries in 'Primitive Man and His Food'.

In Homo erectus woman it was a breeze. Not Homo sapiens though.

Akrasia

Evolution doesn't design things optimally, it merely selects the best out of a bad set of choices and refines it within the constraints that have developed following on from those choices.

If there was 'intelligent design' then the baby would be delivered directly out of the uterus through some kind of velcro bound opening in the abdomen, but god isn't real and all mammals have a birth canal regardless of their shape, so human females have to negotiate the kink in the delivery process caused when we went from moving on 4 legs to standing upright and the shape of our pelvis allows us better motion than one that would not require the baby to rotate during the birthing process in order to fit through the narrow gap in the pelvis.

It evolved because standing upright gave us an advantage that allowed us to increase our population even at the cost of losing more women and babies in child birth.

the_monkey

My wife is small and our 1st son was 4.7 KG, massive, he evened out as he grew up, now she is pregnant with 002 (and last) and has 2 months left and her bump is huge, we were convinced it was twins.... but no just another massive kid, we reckon this one will hit 5 KG.

C sections btw ...

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

kneemos wrote: »

The size of a woman's belly at nine months looks totally out of proportion to the rest of her.
You don't see other animals with such massively distended tummies.

You don't half come out with stuff at times. You are joking right? Ever see a heavily pregnant horse or cow? Come on!

And Belly??? My grandmother used to say only animals have bellies.

Wibbs

Eugene Norman wrote: »

and part of the solution to that is humans are born prematurely relative to other animals.

Yeah a newborn human is still pretty much gestating when compared to other mammals. We're more akin to marsupials minus the pouch.

Some animals can walk after a day or so.

More like minutes in some cases.

Eugene Norman wrote: »

It's good evolutionary "design" because the surviving big brained humans were evolutionary fitter than other humans and animals.

Exactly, enough survived to make us the dominant animal on the planet and our big brains and skulls have actually reduced in size over the last 100,000 years. Our cousins the Neandertals had even larger skulls. Dunno how wide their pelvis was though, or how their newborns compared to ours. They seemed to have had a tragic level of infant mortality though.

Akrasia wrote:

Bullsh1t

Maybe. Price did make some very valid points about diet, especially for the times he was living in. The mothers diet might influence childbirth, not with regard to the size of her or her pelvis, but the size of the infant. IE maybe on some traditional diets the growing infant gets good levels of nutrition, while staying at a relatively low weight at birth? I dunno, just thinking out loud here.

PandaPoo

I'm due in 3 weeks. I look ridiculous , I waddle, I'm in constant pain, my baby is estimated at being 9 pounds already.

Anyone want to take over??

Menas

What a bizarre thread. Not sure of the point of it - to have a scientific discussion or to frighten any posters who may be pregnant and slightly nervous about giving birth?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

the_monkey wrote: »

My wife is small and our 1st son was 4.7 KG, massive, he evened out as he grew up, now she is pregnant with 002 (and last) and has 2 months left and her bump is huge, we were convinced it was twins.... but no just another massive kid, we reckon this one will hit 5 KG.

C sections btw ...

Two of my kids were 4.6 and 4.9 kg. Both were delivered naturally following a very short labour. I've seen bigger babies. A friend had a boy of 5.8kg.

Eugene Norman

Oakley Bumpy Rabies wrote: »

You don't half come out with stuff at times. You are joking right? Ever see a heavily pregnant horse or cow? Come on!

And Belly??? My grandmother used to say only animals have bellies.

Thing is I haven't. Do heavily pregnant cows actually get very distended? Do sheep? Does the average guy driving around in spring report home that he's seen heavily pregnant sheep on the mountain?

Might be obvious to farmers but I can't say I've noticed.

kneemos

Oakley Bumpy Rabies wrote: »

You don't half come out with stuff at times. You are joking right? Ever see a heavily pregnant horse or cow? Come on!

And Belly??? My grandmother used to say only animals have bellies.

The difference with the horse or cow is the foal or calf will be up running around almost immediately.

What do you call the bit between your chest and pelvis.

kylith

Wibbs wrote: »

Yeah a newborn human is still pretty much gestating when compared to other mammals. We're more akin to marsupials minus the pouch.More like minutes in some cases.

We're also quite advanced at birth compared to some other animals; puppies and kittens are born blind and deaf. Many rodents are hairless, blind, and deaf. We're, I suppose, underdeveloped for animals that don't use dens for birthing, though one could say that we are denning animals as we have sheltered in caves and, later, constructed houses for ourselves, which other primates do not.

Wibbs wrote: »

Maybe. Price did make some very valid points about diet, especially for the times he was living in. The mothers diet might influence childbirth, not with regard to the size of her or her pelvis, but the size of the infant. IE maybe on some traditional diets the growing infant gets good levels of nutrition, while staying at a relatively low weight at birth? I dunno, just thinking out loud here.

It's also possible that our difficulties are caused by good nutrition leading to higher birth weights whereas the non-westerners studied could have had lower birth weights due to malnutrition.

ceadaoin.

kneemos wrote: »

As I said it's a poor evolutionary design.
Large undeveloped babies that will kill large numbers of women without medical assistance.

I don't think large numbers of women would die without medical assistance. The majority of births are straightforward vaginal deliveries and studies have shown that home births are just as safe as hospital births for low risk pregnancies. Medical intervention isn't needed that often.

the_monkey

Oakley Bumpy Rabies wrote: »

Two of my kids were 4.6 and 4.9 kg. Both were delivered naturally following a very short labour. I've seen bigger babies. A friend had a boy of 5.8kg.

:eek:

Eugene Norman

ceadaoin. wrote: »

I don't think large numbers of women would die without medical assistance. The majority of births are straightforward vaginal deliveries and studies have shown that home births are just as safe as hospital births for low risk pregnancies. Medical intervention isn't needed that often.

It's just as safe for low risk deliveries because science works out before the birth what's low risk and what's high risk, and the easier births are kept at home. It's still stupid though.

The death rate ( of mothers) used to be about 10 per thousand births which is significant if you think women would be getting pregnant a lot.

Day Lewin

! read once that the baby's brain is growing at its fastest on the first day after birth!

Several points need to be made:

1. Mammals that gestate just one offspring tend to have larger ones, obviously. Consider a bitch having eight puppies - each pup is one-eighth the size of a theoretical singleton.
So, human babies, elephant calves, whale calves, even bovine calves - proportionately larger babies.

2. Because we walk upright, our pelvis has a different shape - basically to stop the contents falling out! It is narrower at the base - makes for a tighter passage. [no vulgar quips, please]

3. The human USP is the big brain: our babies can't walk or run at birth, or hunt food efficiently - the moment of their birth is a subtle, and dubious, compromise between staying INSIDE the mother till the last possible for maturing that brain, and making a last-minute exit to the outside world when the foetal skull has grown to the maximum possible size to still fit through - just.

It IS a very tight fit, no mistake about that. Amazing that it usually works - good midwifery and good health make a critical contribution, though. And we shouldn't give birth lying down, as if we had a horizontal pelvis like most mammals: we should do it upright so that gravity assists with that designed-by-evolution pelvic diameter.

Greenmachine

Peregrinus has said it best. Vs other animal and how close a new born is to supporting themselves a newborn is effectively half term. It is however a trade off of the the higher ordered brain. We do not face the same immediate treats of predators as lower order animals etc, if we did we would have died out long ago, as we would have been incredibly vulnerable considering the mother would have to constantly nest with the young.

Akrasia

Wibbs wrote: »

Maybe. Price did make some very valid points about diet, especially for the times he was living in. The mothers diet might influence childbirth, not with regard to the size of her or her pelvis, but the size of the infant. IE maybe on some traditional diets the growing infant gets good levels of nutrition, while staying at a relatively low weight at birth? I dunno, just thinking out loud here.

Childbirth has been dangerous and painful since pre biblical times, Native americans and aboriginal peoples had very high levels of maternal mortality even when they were still living on their traditional hunter gatherer diets...

Yes our diet affects our size but to say that child birth was safe and that babies were delivered with 'relative ease' before we started eating modern 'refined sugars' doesn't stand up to scrutiny

Akrasia

ceadaoin. wrote: »

I don't think large numbers of women would die without medical assistance. The majority of births are straightforward vaginal deliveries and studies have shown that home births are just as safe as hospital births for low risk pregnancies. Medical intervention isn't needed that often.

The risks of childbirth are amplified in cultures where there are multiple pregnancies

If you have a 5% chance of complications during pregnancy, and the average woman has 6 children, then you're going to have 1 in 4 women having a pregnancy with life threatening complications.

99% of maternal mortality occurs in the developing world where women don't have access to medical services to identify risky pregnancies and take emergency precautions if complications arise.

Has the op been looking at some work college who is 9 months pregnant and thinking how is she going to get that baby out!

A Pregnant women's bump can look enormous.

thegreatgonzo

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Thing is I haven't. Do heavily pregnant cows actually get very distended? Do sheep? Does the average guy driving around in spring report home that he's seen heavily pregnant sheep on the mountain?

Might be obvious to farmers but I can't say I've noticed.

Yes they do look distended at the later stage. Having 4 legs instead of 2 probably makes it look less obvious but when you are used to seeing them not pregnant you will notice.

With cows it is is extremely common that they need assistance at birth by the way.

kylith

Eugene Norman wrote: »

Thing is I haven't. Do heavily pregnant cows actually get very distended? Do sheep? Does the average guy driving around in spring report home that he's seen heavily pregnant sheep on the mountain?

Might be obvious to farmers but I can't say I've noticed.

http://orig09.deviantart.net/8b52/f/2008/185/4/3/jeff__s_cow__lena_by_neos429.jpg

Yes, cows get very distended in pregnancy.

thegreatgonzo

kylith wrote: »

http://orig09.deviantart.net/8b52/f/2008/185/4/3/jeff__s_cow__lena_by_neos429.jpg

Yes, cows get very distended in pregnancy.

Poor Daisy. I hope she's getting her pre-calver minerals:D