Is it because of the whole big head/bipedalism thing? Other mammals can pop out babies in no time and it seems like that would be way more advantageous for multiple reasons (less stress on mom and baby, not in a vulnerable position for hours in the wild, etc). Why does the norm skew towards a day rather than hours?
In: 419
Is this about the rhino video? I feel like this is about the rhino video
(sorry for bad English, not my first language) My girlfriend is a nurse, she helps delivering babies every day. A couple of things I learned, on top of our biology:
1- age: we have babies a lot older. Young moms deliver babies a lot easier than older moms, because of the state of the tissues. More elasticity kinda?
2- positioning: the positions we mainly use are for the doctor, not for an optimal delivery.
Something else possibly being missed – a major part of the time in labor is waiting for the cervix (the opening to the uterus) to be dilated enough to begin pushing. You possibly carry a misconception that women are pushing a baby out for almost a days worth of labor.
[There are 3 stages to labor](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK544290/). The first stage is dilation and contractions, the second stage is the delivery of the baby (technically fetus – thats the medical terminology you will see in literature), and the third is delivery of the placenta. By that resource, stage 2 (pushing-delivery) lasts on average less than 4 hours for women with an epidural who haven’t had a baby, and less than 3 hours for women with an epidural who have previously had a baby. It’s on average less than 3 hours for women *without* an epidural who haven’t had a baby and less than 2 hours for women without an epidural who have previouslyhad a baby.
Stage 3 lasts between 5-30 minutes, typically
So, definitely not a days worth of actively pushing the baby out. Your medical team will be alarmed if stage 2 is going that long, and will likely have intervened after too long with no progression.
Latest Answers