Do you know how many centimeters a woman has to be dilated to give birth?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A friend of my wife and I is having a baby today. Labor has been going on for almost 12 hours now, and it’s pretty slow going (she’s pretty small). We just got an update “3 centimeters”. I tell my wife “That’s pretty good - how much more does she have to go?”

“What? You don’t know that a woman needs to be X cm?! How do you not know this?”

I thought that was fairly obscure info for a guy who doesn’t have any kids to know, but whatever. There’s one* way to find out. Please select the dilation diameter closest to what you feel/know with absolute certainty is the bare minimum to get that baby out.

*okay, likely more than one. But let’s go with this for now.

2

The rule of thumb is 10cm, but I suspect that is as subject to variance as pregnancy = 40 weeks long.

ETA: the cervix will stretch more than that to actually give birth, but that is considered the end of regular labor.

I am a woman, but I had 4 C-sections because apparently my cervix did not know the answer to this question. :wink:

3

Obscure? Really? I take it you never watched ER or Scrubs or basically any medical tv show ever? Because they all at some point mention this fact. All of them.

4

So if someone watches medical TV shows, it’s “not obscure”. If someone doesn’t watch medical TV shows, it *is *“obscure”? I’m not sure you quite understand the meaning of that word…

5

I think the poll would be very telling if the options were further divided, “I’m a father,” “I’m a childless male.”

Women probably just know whether or not they’ve borne children. They have many mysteries…

6

“September.”

7

Right. I’ve been trough it twice as the father. I don’t recall if I knew it before.

8

And yet, according to the current results, only 4 women have participated in the poll. (They all got it right, though.)

9

Not me. I’m a 52-year-old [childfree] woman and have never even thought about this before, much less known the answer. I’ve also never changed a diaper, so really not my realm at all.

10

Ha - did you guess correctly, then, romansperson? So far, the women know their dilations!

11

Childless gal; got it.

12

…but apparently you got it right. It’s in your DNA.

13

The thread title is misleading - my answer is “No”.

14

I guessed 12 cm rather than 10. I don’t watch TV, so the medical shows that CCL refers to are outside my experience. But I figured the reason for the dilation was so a baby’s head could squeeze through. OK, how big is a newborn baby’s head? I guessed 4-5 inches across, and went with the high end.

15

I guessed. I really don’t know. Actually, funny thing is, I took out a ruler and looked at it. Then I estimated how big the baby’s head’s going to be and converted the inches to roughly centimeters (2.2 cen = 1 in?) Then I realized I don’t know what dilated really means, it can’t mean that the hole is opening up to 10 cen by itself right? Then I decided 10 was a nice, decent round number and stuck with it

So did I get it right? :smiley:

16

No idea. My wife gave birth, but I figured the doctor would know that if she didn’t.

17

I didn’t vote since I’d already seen the correct answer in Elemenopy’s post.

18

Damn, you’re absolutely right. Any passing mod - can the first entries (4cm) be changed to “no - I’m a ______”?

19

I would have said “no”, but then I looked at the options and something in my brain said 10cm. So clearly I knew, probably by overhearing it on TV shows and things, but had no confidence or understanding of that knowledge.

20

Childless gal. I have no idea what dilation is required. And while I watched plenty of “ER” in my day, I have no interest in childbirth so whatever was conveyed just went in one ear and out the other.

There’s no option for “I have no idea” and the correct answer was given in the thread so I couldn’t really guess. I probably would have guessed 10, not because I know but because round numbers are always a solid guess when you’re talking about general trends across huge populations.