If a stone age woman didn't bite off the umbilical cord would her baby die?

[Oslo_Ostragoth]

@WhyNot

Well, we have these ridiculously large heads, see, even as babies. And we insist on this walking upright thing, which means our pelvises aren’t all they could be, and the hole the head has to pass through is at right angles to the birth canal. (Yeah, “intelligent design,” my ass!) So first we tried* having our babies sooner, before they’re really fully cooked. Works for the kangaroos, right? So instead of a nice year long gestation, we have 'em around 40 weeks. Sure, the babies are completely helpless at that point, but if we pair bond to our mates, someone can go find the food while the other person holds the baby for 6 months. Hmm…maybe pouches would be a good idea…

That still wasn’t quite enough, so next we tried collapsing the skull of the infant in the birth canal - the bones slide one over the other to make the huge thing a little smaller. That seems to do the trick, most of the time, but it still takes time to encourage bones to move like that. And there’s still that weird right angle to get around. Babies still get stuck on pelvic bones distressingly often. Sometimes they can be moved by changing the position Mom’s laboring in, but sometimes they won’t budge, and you need progressively greater interventions to get them out before Mom’s too exhausted to push anymore.

And then there’s the social and mental handicaps. We’ve decided to hide away our real women giving birth and replace that experience with overly dramatic actors shrieking on television and going from first (excruciating) contraction to delivering a 5 month old in about 14 minutes flat. For many women, the first real birth they ever witness is the one where the child is coming out of them. So we’re terrified, which never does good things for relaxation of large muscle groups, and we’re ignorant, which is rarely useful when it comes to doing new things.

And we *think *all the time, which means “instinct” which, as far as we know, guides all other animals through this process, doesn’t work so well with humans. So because of the ignorance thing and the thinking thing, we want guidance and assistance.

We don’t deliver like other animals because we’re not like other animals, in this particular instance. Some of that is through biology (some breeds of bulldog require intervention at birth for some of the same reasons we do) and some through social conditioning and fear.

Do I think (most) women would be (mostly) better off if we lessened the default level of intervention? Absolutely, no question. But I wouldn’t want to give birth totally alone, either.

*speaking metaphorically, of course. And possibly out of order.

Very nice post, but I think you missed the point of my question. When a pig, dog, cat, calf, (horse) foal or whatever I have observed is born, the umbilical seems to detach by itself from the mother with no apparent risk to either, and the umbilical dries and shrinks to almost nothing on the baby within hours.

What I don’t get is why human umbilicals need special attention to separate mother from baby.

[irishgirl]

Oslo Ostragoth- foals and calves and whatnot are born inside their amniotic membranes… human babies aren’t.
It’s different for primates than for puppies, foals, kittens, calves and lambs. Otherwise I’d be a qualified vet as well as a doctor, no?
Foetal scalp pH, which involves the sticking of a speculum with a light attachment into the vagina of a labouring woman, pricking the baby’s scalp (or buttock, whatever is nearest the exit) and using capillary action to draw some drops of the blood into a tube is probably what was going on brujaja. It is every bit as unpleasant and fiddly as it sounds.

The test measured the pH of baby’s blood. Low pH means more acid (caused by buildup of carbon dioxide in the body) and this is a sign of poor oxygenation. Poor oxygenation is due to things like very strong, frequent contractions cutting off the blood supply from the placenta to the baby, twisting or knots in the cord, or the cord being squashed between baby’s head and mum’s pelvic bones during labour.

Poor oxygenation, can, in worst case scenarios, lead to hypoxic brain damage or death of baby. So, if the trace on the monitor of baby’s heart rate looks worrying they test the pH.

If the pH is OK, carry on with labour, baby is coping fine and a bit longer being squeezed like billy-o won’t hurt.

If the pH is not OK you deliver baby by the fastest method possible at the time, whether that is a c-section, forceps, ventouse or just getting mum to push like hell.

Does that make sense?