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
Part of the answer is not the pressure on human childbirth, but the pressures on *wild animal* birth & rearing.
Many (non-human) animals are at risk from predators while giving birth, so the birth has to be somewhat faster and easier. Humans would be too, but we developed protective tribes, and later, safe buildings. Those animals don’t have a soft mattress to give birth onto, so their young have to be tough enough to drop onto the ground and be okay most of the time. If they were not, that species would immediately go out of existence.
Some animal babies, like deer, also have to be able to walk on the first day. But some animals, like birds, can be sheltered and fed without moving, so they are pretty “useless” too.
We have big heads and narrow hips
Big heads for our big brains, we can even fully develop them in utero because then our heads would be too big, that’s why our babies are so helpless.
We have narrow hips to walk bipedally. No other living specimen is bipedal and gives live birth.
Birthing is a lot better than you think. Like with many things the negative news travels hard, loud and fast. The vast majority of women have no problems. Of all of the women I personally know whom I know about their pregnancy and birth experiences (>100) only one had problems and she survived. So that makes the rate of problems about 1%. Negative news is something we naturally focus on as a survival mechanism but it is important to look at the real statistics.
You have a misconception.
There are tons of animals having stillborn.
Cows have for their first pregnancy a chance of ~10% for stillbirth, dog are at about 4.8%, cats at 5-12%
While in Guinea-Bissau, the rate for humans is about 3.2%, the worst rate on earth.
Sure, even in Guinea-Bissau there are medical facilities, but U don’t think they make that much of a difference.
Tell me if I’m wrong, this was 2 min google search
Our heads are too big.
About 100,000 years ago we were in trouble. Our population got down to about 8000 in central Africa. Inbreeding increased and got meant more recessive genes and all those experimental prototypes we have cooking in the back burner genes were expressed more often. We threw some evolutionary hail-marys, because the current trajectory was doomed.
One such thing was larger brains that let us better track prey, forage better, and use tools. It turned out this was GREAT. And it worked really well.
But women’s hips and other parts still haven’t quite gotten up to speed and adapted to that change. It works well enough, and enough people survive to keep the species going.
95% of all births have no complications. There is a reason for that there are 8.1 billion people on the planet.
>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.
im not speaking based on politics! I SWEAR! i am a medical professional i promise 😭the birthing position they put you in in the hospital is not as beneficial for the mother and baby, but the doctor has easier access if things go awry! the ideal birthing position is like, on your knees, holding your top half up (this is so vulgar so i am sorry, but kinda like the cowgirl position, but less sexy). most home births that i’ve witnessed end up in that position and it moves things smoother for the mom. THAT BEING SAID. someone has to be kind of in the moms tush to make sure the baby gets caught safely (they’re coming out head first, but Cannot fall out head first), so it’s kind of whichever you prefer, less pain but it’s harder to push out, or more pain but it’s easier to push.
Dangerous yes, inefficient no. It has the best balance between quantity and failure evolution could achieve.
We have big brains but small pelvises. That makes birth more painful and riskier than in other species. [head size relative to pelvic opening across primates](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-relationship-between-the-size-of-the-maternal-pelvic-inlet-and-the-size-of-the_fig2_11017978)
Latest Answers