I hear of women in my community and across the world either having stillbirths or dying during the process of birth all the time. Why?
How can a dog or a cow give birth in the dirt and turn out fine, but if humans did the same, the mom/infant have a higher chance of dying? How can baby mice, who are similar to human babies (naked, gross, blind), survive the “newborn phase”?
And why are babies so big but useless? I understand that babies have evolved to have a soft skull to accommodate their big brain, but why don’t they have the strength to keep their head up?
In: Biology
>How can a dog or a cow give birth in the dirt and turn out fine, but if humans did the same, the mom/infant have a higher chance of dying?
One difference is our placenta relative to most other mammals. In order to facilitate more gas/nutrient exchange for our massive brains, our placenta is more invasive than most other mammals and mom’s blood is actually exiting the arteries and sloshing around in a newly created space to bath the terminal villi of the placenta. At term, blood flow through the placenta is around 750 mL/min. This means we are more prone to postpartum hemorrhage than other mammals and with a blood volume of ~5L it takes only a few mins of completely uncontrolled hemorrhage to die.
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