What happens if a midget gets pregnant?

[Keen]

What would happen if a midget, dwarf, or little person got pregnant? I mean, I’ve never seen any pregnant. Since most of the ones I’ve seen are pretty small, could their bodies handle being pregnant? I’m assuming that they can’t, because just because a midget gets pregnant doesn’t mean the child is going to be a midget… or does it? :eek:

[gigi]

From http://www2.primushost.com/~dkennedy/dwarfism_genetics.html

Many dwarf couples have used ultrasound prenatally in attempts to detect fetuses with fatal (in infancy) dwarfing conditions (which occur up to 25% of the time depending on specific diagnosis, when both parents are dwarfs). However, this technology was not great, in that there were a number of false positives and false negative results. Due to skeletal design, most dwarf women have high risk pregnancies necessitating C-section deliveries, adding to the seriousness of family planning decisions. Many short statured couples have just gained the ability to screen prenatally through amniocentesis, due to the gene mutation(s) being known.

Looks like the babies may or may not be little people, depending on genetics and hormonal levels, etc.

[gigi]

I guess I should have known better than to respond to this thread, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. As the link in your own web page, <http://laugh.at/midgets> , states:

Q: Can short-statured couples become the parents of average-size children?

A: Yes. The odds vary with diagnosis, but a person with achondroplasia has one dwarfism gene and one “average-size” gene at a particular location. If both parents have achondroplasia, there is a 25 percent chance their child will inherit the non-dwarfism gene from each parent and thus be average-size. There’s a 50 percent chance the child will inherit one dwarfism gene and one non-dwarfism gene and thus have achondroplasia, just like her or his parents. And there is a 25 percent chance the child will inherit both dwarfism genes, a condition known a double-dominant syndrome, and which invariably ends in death at birth or shortly thereafter.

from www.lpaonline.org/resources_faq.html

::wanders off muttering “what was I thinking?”::

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

Welcome to the Straight Dope, Keen. For future reference, we have a rather low opinion here in General Questions of people who already know the answer but who ask the question anyway. Our Forum Page has only so much space for threads, and every pointless thread means a worthwhile thread gets bumped off the page to the outer darkness of Page 2.

However, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt, like Gigi [eh, don’t beat yourself up, babe, I would’ve probably bit, too–and props to you for thinking to check his homepage, I never look at the homepages], and assume that you were asking, not whether midgets can get pregnant, but what would be the effects of pregnancy on a midget’s body. Your own link shows that Little People can and do get pregnant, and the fact that Little People couples undergo testing to find out whether she’s carrying a dwarf child must mean they’re expecting a viable offspring.

The best thing I can do for you, Keen, is to echo your mom, your school librarian, and all your junior high school teachers and say, “If you look it up for yourself, you’ll remember it better next time.”

Here’s a link to my favorite search engine.

Google

Happy browsing!

[manhattan]

I wonder about the children of trolls?

This thread is closed. Keen, do not do this again.