Seems fairly obvious most female humans giving birth have a considerable amount of pain, but does this apply to other animals?
I seriously doubt it. Humans are in a unique position – our upright stance has caused us several problems,including lower back pain and a very different birth process. Couple that with the unusually large size of the human brain (the head actually deforms significantly during birth – see models in the American Museum of Natural History, the Boston Museum, of Science, and elsewhere) and you have a very complex birth procedure, even if not complications develop.
http://www.umm.edu/imagepages/17176.htm
I nominate spotted hyenas as being worse off.
I’d assume many animals have the same problem as humans, a large newborn head size relative to mother’s size – hose, cow, elephant seem to have at least some difficulty. No animal has it as bad as humans – large skill, and mother’s bipedial stance, but I’ve definitely seen Nature specials with other primates having some difficulty, I think the one I’m thinking of is Japanese Macaque.
It is simply not the case that horses labor painfully for 12, 24, or 36 hours. Labor in horses takes about 30-45 minutes.
I had no idea what you were on about until I saw:
:eek:
For REALS?!?
Humans are not that different. Human clitoral tissue doesn’t just make up the clitoris, but spreads out through the vagina. Which the baby’s head passes.
They’re not laughing NOW.
I asked a few animals about this, but I did not get any very helpful answers.
Seriously, is there really a way to rate how much something hurts apart from asking? (And even asking is not a very good way.)
(I still would not want to be a female hyena, though.)
Kiwis might be a candidate.
Well, I can tell, somewhat, if an animal is in pain just by watching it, if I’m familiar with the animal, or at least familiar with that species. And the narrowness of the birth canal vs. the size of the baby’s head has to have some significance. I was in labor for 18 hours to deliver ONE infant, for instance, and I wouldn’t have delivered her that soon if I hadn’t been on pitocin. On the other hand, I’ve watched cats give birth. For the most part, the queens were relaxed, with only a “MEOW” when they passed each kitten. And it was over in a couple of hours, none of this taking nearly a full day to have one infant, they had their kittens, plural, in a short time. Of course cats don’t usually have other cats around them to fend off predators, and to bring them ice chips, and generally support them through labor, but dogs also have their pups quickly.
And CalMeacham brings up a VERY good point. Humans are really not adapted well to give birth efficiently, and we shouldn’t be doing it on our backs. We’re still in the process of adapting to an upright stance. We don’t walk well, and we don’t give birth well. Our pelvic girdles are almost too small for our babies’ skulls. And not too long ago, a lot of women died because of this.
So how should women be giving birth, if not lying on our backs? Standing up to let gravity help out? Who catches the kid when it falls? Or should it be done in a pool?
I would recommend one of these.
A lot of cultures throughout history and in different parts of the world have women giving birth squatting, or sitting in a supported manner, which allows some assistance by gravity. In Ancient Egypt a phrase like “sitting on the bricks” was a euphemism for giving birth, as apparently they would pile up bricks to provide a sort of open-bottomed seat for laboring women.
It wasn’t until male doctors got involved that giving birth while lying on one’s back became normal anywhere, and it was mainly for the doctor’s convenience.
How about butterflies, moths, and the like when they emerge from their chrysalis?
Birth enablers, or torture devices. On the next Oprah.
When my mom was delivering me, she told the OB/Gyn that she wanted to “pull carrots”, that being the best way she could describe the squatting posture which felt most natural to her.
If you’re squatting (not standing), then there wouldn’t be enough of a fall to worry about. But anyway, humans are a social species, and there have always been midwives or the equivalent (the father or the mother’s female relatives, if nothing else) to help out with births.
Yeah, but is it really accurate to describe it as “giving birth through a narrow clitoris”? Wouldn’t “narrow vagina” be more accurate?
Usually, women squatted or used a birthing stool, I guess the bricks were piled into an open seated chair sort of thing.
http://www.bornonstools.com/oak.html
http://nwbirthstool.com/
I’ve read that King Louis XIV got some of his jollies by watching his mistress giving birth, and in order to do that, she had to be lying down during labor and delivery. I’m not sure how much I believe this. I tend to believe that it was doctors who found that it was easier on THEM if the mother was lying down.
Proves The Bible Is Wrong And Inconsistent Once Again, because the Bible said God cursed ONLY woman (He didn’t say anything about animals,) that she would give birth in pain. When God created animals, they were not already cursed like woman was cursed after she sinned, by giving birth in pain. A curse is a curse, so if its a curse to give birth in pain, then God wouldn’t have created animals to give birth in pain too, because He didn’t:)