# Does everyone in medical school learn how to deliver a baby? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 27, 2020, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361 "2020-06-27T10:49:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/21 "2020-06-28T12:52:52Z")
You don’t count the death of the mother as a complication? ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/22 "2020-06-28T12:59:08Z")
A marine told me that all marines learn about delivering babies. Maybe he meant only the medics which would make sense. He did not mention being a medic but I did not ask him if he was one. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/23 "2020-06-28T13:13:14Z")
Of course death of the mother is a complication (or more precisely, a result of a complication). But even without medical intervention, over 99% of the time, the mother survives. That 1% is still much higher than we would like, when human lives are on the line. But one can still deliver a great many babies without ever once seeing it. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [June 28, 2020, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/24 "2020-06-28T14:08:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Of course death of the mother is a complication (or more precisely, a result of a complication). But even without medical intervention, over 99% of the time, the mother survives. My post was in response to am77494. I said that even a sandwich could deliver deliver a baby during a complication-free human delivery, since the mother could do it with no help at all. am77494 retorted with the fact that many women die in pregnancy. So, my response to him/her was that a pregnancy with a dying mother is not a complication free delivery. No true Scotsman, and all that. I stand by my original statement–If the pregnancy has no complications, then anyone can assist with the delivery (or no one at all). Hell, a sandwich would probably do less harm than an untrained person. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2020, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/25 "2020-06-29T12:54:36Z")
My apologies; I misunderstood. We’re in agreement, then. ---
**Author:** ![brossa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/brossa/32/3040_2.png) [@brossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brossa)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2020, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/26 "2020-06-29T13:19:25Z")
The practical training that a medical student gets to deliver babies varies from place to place, though. We all do a rotation of several weeks in obstetrics, but in practice that ranges from ‘catching dozens of babies in a public hospital’ to ‘watching from the corner of the room in a private birth center’. My experience was the latter - a tony private OB practice in which my presence in the room was refused by about 50% of the delivering mothers, and I never actually touched a mother or child. Meanwhile, my future wife was at a rotation halfway across the state with a totally different experience. The gynecology experience is variable, too: I did my weeks on a gyn/surg unit assisting in abdominal surgeries for gyn malignancies; others did weeks in free clinics doing pap smears and STD counseling. I mean, we’ve all spent classroom time on it, and probably all _seen_ a delivery, but coming out of med school that’s about all you can guarantee. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2020, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/27 "2020-06-29T13:43:13Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > BUT - in a dire emergency I’ll take a vet over a non-medical bystander. You wouldn’t mind being muzzled? 🐕 When my ex wife was pregnant with my daughter, I considered all the possible worst-case-scenarios. I read a book about home delivery and discussed delivery with an MD friend. Messy but doable. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2020, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/28 "2020-07-01T23:05:46Z")
I follow several feline rescue cams, and when these rescues trap a pregnant female, they have her deliver and raise the kittens on camera. Most people would be surprised, and not slightly horrified, how often things go wrong and the mother needs a c-section. It’s just not something Mother Nature always take care of. The c-section is not live; they film it and put it on You Tube later, and the vet always spays her at the same time. Mammals don’t need ovaries to nurse, because those hormones come from the pituitary gland. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2020, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361/29 "2020-07-02T16:18:35Z")
Somewhere in the Jackmannii archives is a photo of me taken during a second-year family practice clerkship, having just delivered a baby (with considerable assist from the kindly doc). I am in slightly bloodstained scrubs, looking as though it had been a bigger ordeal for me than the mom. Nowadays I would be happy to call 911 for you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-everyone-in-medical-school-learn-how-to-deliver-a-baby/913361.md?page=1)