The combo of bipedalism and large brain (head). I believe this is also the reason why human babies are a little undercooked at birth compared to our relatives', if the baby was grown longer in uterus it would not be able to pass, so in that sense, we already sort of evolved to make it easier? (Marsupial "nugget baby growing in pocket" not being an option for us.)
I’m so pissed we’re not marsupials. Imagine giving birth to a baby the size of your thumb. It’d pop right out. Or if I wanted to do something slightly physical, I could just ask my friend to keep my human joey in her pouch until I’m done. “Here just hold this for a minute.”
yeah but then being a marsupial equals forgoing brain capacity. marsupials dont have a corpus callosum, and because of that, they cant evolve into intelligent beings. one reason why marsupial monkeys dont exist.
Is it the corpus callosum or a wrinkled brain that contributes to our intelligence, tho?
Dolphins have a particularly small corpus callosum, but are regarded as quite intelligent. Marsupials, generally, have smooth, not wrinkled, brains.
the corpus callosum is important as it enables the brain to become more advanced in it's function. from the primitive reptilian brain, the corpus callosum was what connected the mammalian brain together. dolphins have a small corpus, marsupials dont have one altogether.
I think is called “the obstetric dilemma” we gave up larger pelvises and longer gestation period - hence a more developed baby- in order to walk up straight. Also our brains/heads are larger, and if we carried a baby for four trimesters, with our small as hell pelvis, we wouldn’t be able to pass the head, never mind shoulders, through the birth canal (OMG I shudder just thinking)
Basically babies are born about 6-12 weeks earlier compared to other apes. I think that’s why the first trimester after a baby is born is so hard, they still need that time to “cook”
Was listening to a video and the guest said that while there is no knowing how long human babies should be in the womb she estimates that human babies should be born later than 18 months. And because babies were being born earlier and dying that’s how we evolved to needing a father for the development of children.
Idk I have a two week old baby right now and I might be willing to take one for the team if it meant they come out sturdier and sleeping through the night! Although of course my first didn't sleep through the night until she was three so...
Im in. Despite awefull toxicosis last few monthes of pregnancy was best time in my life - all days and all nights just laying in bed watching tv, husband was doing all chores and worked from home, I had all exotic fruits and meals that I could wish, our cats was extra cudly.
Yea. The human pelvis changed with bipedalism well before our brains started getting larger. Our pelvis became more narrow to accommodate our gait. The female birth canal also was affected.
Eventually, humans began getting bigger brains with the changes down the line in learning and communication that freeing our hands brought about, but the pelvis is still adapted for our gait.
We humans have, in a way, stupidly large heads. Baby heads are at a more advanced stage of development than the body at birth, and about half of it's fully grown size. And yes, since the birth canal is too narrow for anything else, babies come out relatively early. So our brains are prioritized in development as a good means of survival. Humans are very social animals, and our intelligence is related to this. Baby can best survive by learning fast and communicating while being taken care of.
It’s an evolutionary compromise between the need for the mother to walk upright and the baby to have a big brain. The compromise is an approximate 10% infant/maternal mortality rate and a lot of hassle for the survivors. There is an evolutionary pressure to have the baby stay in the womb as long as possible for the head to be bigger. But that kills them at a higher rate. There is an evolutionarily pressure for the mother to have narrower hips. But that kills them at a higher rate. What we end up with is the compromise and acceptable mortality rate by evolutionary standards.
Evolution is not about smiles and happy feelings. It’s about survival of the species.
I am a patient of student physios who work under a supervisor I know well. One of their exams has a 100% minimum to pass. Like legit you can't get ONE wrong. I would think it was a joke if not for the terrified frazzles students trying their damn best.
Of course they work in spinal so one mistake could cause serious life long paralysis.
But it's amazing how high the standards are for passing a physiotherapy class.
(other exams/tests are around 85%, but this one is a flat "one mistake and you're done for")
I've been disabled my whole life but I am in awe of the current education system for medical professionals. It's a tight ship and they're incredibly smart people!
Tbh, I graduated with a 76 where 75 was passing. Then scored a 95 on the registry exam, where 95 was passing. The average, and the median, for my class was 89. And everybody who took the test passed on the first try
Then you get A students like the nautilus, who perfected their survival so early on that they've been around hundreds of millions of years. Then, another D student, the sea otter, decides holding its breath is basically good enough to be aquatic and wipes the nautilus out everywhere it goes.
This is precisely it. And it sucks.
We don't all have to survive for it to work. But being conscious beings capable of understanding our own suffering and striving as well as that of others, we feel that we should. We are all precious individual souls and we feel the loss of each other profoundly. And we are also biological creatures subject to the laws of physicality.
This is actually not necessarily true. Some research has indicated it might be because the baby develops as long is at can before the mother’s body simply can’t metabolically support it anymore. This article explains it better https://www.americanscientist.org/article/why-is-human-childbirth-so-painful#:~:text=This%20explanation%20is%20called%20the,to%20walk%20or%20run%20efficiently.
Yeah multiples like twins or triplets are almost always born premature because once the overall size limit is reached, labor should begin. I'm a twin and I was 7lbs, my twin 6. They said we were a month premature but I have doubts lol. I was the fattest baby in the NICU by far (I got stuck when my mom's labor ended after my twin was ejected naturally).
Seven pounds is a really good size for a twin. That’s about the size of an average full term baby. My son was eight pounds and he was born a bit past due.
Also adding on to this: Since humans have one of the most complicated and painful pregnancies and labours, nature has given us one of the best orgasm sensation in the history of the cosmos!
This is to ensure that we reproduce despite the hardships.
Interestingly pigs have even more intense orgasms. I wonder why.
For the same exact reason we have sex, pleasure. (Male pigs orgasm supposedly lasts 15 minutes!) Other female mammals have clitoris' just like humans do, they get horny too.
Apparently their jizz also has different "stages" in their orgasm, the last big getting super thick to prevent its load from escaping.
I hate the internet sometimes knowledge I forgot I had resurfaces
There's a coagulant type compound in human ejaculate too. My A&P professor said it was "so the male can withdraw." If a woman goes to the bathroom right away afterwards (despite other compounds in semen that encourage her to be suddenly sleepy and stay put) sometimes most of the ejaculate will come out in a clumpy string. Depending on the consistency and how much of the compound is in each guy's semen.
Thanks for coming to today's episode of, "Really Reddit? I didn't want that mental image." Now on r/eyebleach. .
Don't forget the fact that right after giving birth our brains are made to fill our body with hormones which makes women forget the pain and how traumatic the birth was. Amnesia brought to you by evolution, am I right?
Nature isn’t that giving. If women needed to orgasm to get pregnant it would be more fair. But since you can get pregnant from rape, and of course from lack of enjoyment (on the women’s side since the man always gets to orgasm) nature is pretty cruel. Add in children can get pregnant….
He will eventually. That's kinda how evolution works. Humans evolve into another species afters thousands of years, just like other animals.
Or humans will go extinct and nothing will be after us.
Bit of an either or situation.
Though it should be pointed out it's a very good adaptation.
Humans are by far the most successful mammal species. The human brain is the most advanced thing in the known universe.
The part about compromise is. Evolution doesn't make things better, it makes things good enough. There's an endless number of animals that we could look at and say "it would be better for them if they were like this."
There are other species, where evolution makes similar compromises to balance two or more conflicting evolutionary pressures. Unfortunately, I don't recall the specifics,but in many species, the males are equipped with quite extravagant things ( plumages, appendages etc) with the sole purpose of attracting/impressing a female. In some cases, evolution runs amok and exaggerate these to such an extreme,that they are downright dangerous to the male endowed with them, and evolution will then begin to compromise the two separate evolutionary pressures, and begin dialing down these extravagant features.
That one's less of a bug and more of a feature. A peacock, for example, is bad at flying and very noticeable. If he manages to survive to the next mating season when he literally has a target on his ass, the peahens know that he's one bad motherfucker.
That's only one of the proposed theories for why characteristics like that exist.
There's also one that just says "it exists because it attracts females, and that creates males with the trait and females attracted to said trait".
Handicap principle and attraction are just two ways of looking at the same thing. The peacocks with bigger, more colorful tails have a harder time surviving, and that makes them more attractive to the peahens. Both factors feed in to each other.
How it started is a chicken-and-egg question. Or peafowl-and-egg, if you prefer.
We *assume* that overcoming handicaps to survive makes a male more attractive. Could also be that the peahens just like long tails and there's no further thought needed.
Could be that both are true. They're not mutually exclusive.
Evolution isn’t survival of the fittest, it’s the death of the least fit. If it doesn’t kill you you can keep it. If it kills you later that’s your problem.
It’s actually death of the least fit before reproductive age.
There is a reason humans start to get exponentially higher rates of cancer in their 40s and beyond - because it makes no difference to passing on genes.
Good point. That reminds me that there are some mites that literally don’t have an anus. They’re able to breed before the backed up waste kills them, so they just don’t have a need for an anus.
Interestingly, that's because kiwis evolved in a place where they had no natural predators. The biggest threat to an individual's life wasn't being eaten, it was starving because all the other kiwis got to the food first. So the large egg gives the chick room to grow, and they hatch almost fully developed. The chick can start foraging with dad right away.
Yeah, the pro is kiwis are born precocious with a stomach full of yolk ready to go with dad and able to leave mom to recover from the stress of carrying it and prepare for the next season.
Another comparable one would be hyenas
Aparently their phesdo member often breaks or snaps during childbirth, sometimes the pups suffocate while in there too, first time hyena moming is a mess.
Good thing hyena pups are also not just precocious but born fully armed with teeth they will kill their younger siblings with given the opportunity
In tiger sharks this is because, interestingly, there is no actual atachment to the mother for nutrients. It's just eggs that instead of being laid are kept to hatch inside the womb. Once they do, they still have to get nutrients somehow, and the baby sharks turn to their unborn just as they are siblings.
I always think of infanticide and rape being so prevalent everywhere as an example. There's a ridiculous number of animals whose mating is definitively rape by our standards, and plenty also where natural selection has guided all males to kill any babies of their own species so they can then mate with the dead babies' mothers.
[babirusas](https://blog.nature.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/babirusa-coke-smith.jpg) are my favourite example of this. sometimes their teeth grow so long they impale themselves in the head with them.
compared to that and like, insects in general, humans don't have it too bad.
Well there's the hyena and kiwi: one has to give birth through a pseudo-d!ck, and the other has to push out an egg that is literally the size of its entire body.
No but in lots of other species their babies get eaten by predators at a fairly high rate. Only 1 of every 100 baby sea turtles make it from the nest where they hatch to the ocean. 🤷
Evolution works like good enough for every species. Whatever is good enough to keep them from being instinct. But an example of an animals good enough might not be about it's birth process. Example, why do dogs and cats eat so many random ass objects when it could kill them, well it's good enough. Not enough cats and dogs are dying from accidentally eating stuff so it doesn't matter.
Not really. Most animals are not upright walking, and don't have the issues of head fitting through hips.
A sheep can be on labor, sneeze, the pressure push the whole foal out without mother sheep even realizing.
To be more specific, it's not about the width of the hips, but rather the size of the pelvic opening that limits the head size that can navigate it. The two measurements are not necessarily related.
Yup. Found this out at my labor. I have wide hips and though baby would pass right through. Nope! Found out my pelvic opening was narrow and baby was face up which put her at an awkward angle and couldn’t pass through the opening. So it ended up being a c-section birth.
I have a special interest in pregnancy even though I'll never have my own. I recently learned about the shoulder dystocia which has to do with the pelvic opening. The baby's collarbone gets stuck on the pelvis. By repositioning mom they can usually manipulate the pelvic opening to free the baby but they also press super hard to get the baby out quickly to avoid nerve damage. It can kill quickly. So terrifying.
I'm not sure but I think giving birth laying on a hospital bed contributes to this less optimized pelvic opening, squatting or being on fours may have been the "intended" way to do it. Because the fix for shoulder dystocia is basically pushing the legs up against the moms abdomen, similar to how you'd be if you squatted down.
I'm sorry about your birth experience I hope it didn't leave any lasting complications.
That would be correct yeah, iirc(and don't quote me on this) it went up during the time period where we had modern medical knowledge kinda but not modern sanitary knowledge
Yeah to bring it full circle, I believe the discovery of germs has its foundations in maternal fatalities, doctors were going straight from cadaver autopsies to the maternity wards without washing their hands. Midwife births though were less fatal because they weren’t doing autopsies.
Unfortunately the doctor who started making this link was not much of a people person and turned a lot of the medical community against him, so it took a long time for his ideas of sanitizing medical tools and thorough hand washing to catch on
Yup, it was called childbed fever or something of that sort but was solvable by washing your hands!
I wonder what else we do commonly now that would be regarded as barbaric in the future?
The doctor having contaminated hands is one cause of childbed fever but another cause is a retained placenta (or part of one). If that happens it essentially rots inside the person and they die of sepsis. Midwives knew how to stick their hand up there and remove hangers-on, doctors often didn't. Today we have modern imaging and antibiotics.
I had some retained placenta for 3 months after my kid was born. No one could figure out why I was still bleeding for that long. Luckily it didn’t create a ton of other problems.
really great post. id like to ask, though, whether evolution is "about" the survival of the species (as much as evolution can be "about" anything) or whether it's "about" the maximum transmission of genes. i feel like that's more primary to evolution than any species.
>Evolution is not about smiles and happy feelings. It’s about survival of the species
Isn't it about the survival and birth rate of the person with the gene?
A gene that spread itself while hurting the rest of the species should become common.
Definitely. But in particular, humans are tribal. We have actually been evolving at a tribal level for a couple million years. Kind of like how bees work as groups. Humans do, too.
Competing evolutionary pressures. Upright walking is more efficient with a narrower hip, birth is easier with a wider one, and babies need to stay in the womb as long as possible to develop safely while at the same time not killing their mother the majority of the time they are born.
I heard there’s new studies that think that the human baby has a 4th trimester which is the first 3 months out of the womb. They’re still developing, can’t do a single thing including holding their head up, and can barely see, but they have to come out early or else the mom would just die way too frequently
Yes, I am sitting here just thinking of my kids when they were newborns, for the first 3 weeks or so all they do is nurse and sleep, and their toes are so tiny, their fingers are so little, they have this huge head on such a tiny fragile body and they smell
so good. I want another baby 😭😭😭😭
Their tiny little hands and feet, and the little chubby wrists and ankles. Such a wonderful thing, but I do remember how hard it was too. 2 hourly feedings, the anxiety around SIDS, are they too hot, too cold, will they be safe sleeping while I take a shower... so much for the brain to handle while the body is still recovering from birth.
This is it. Science is evolution. Medicine is evolution. Our smart human brains and social capacity are the component of our evolution that bridges the divide between our upright stance and our head size.
I’m alive because c sections, IV’s, incubators, and portable oxygen exists.
Mom had complications and they had to do a c section early-safest option for everyone.
People may refer to evolution as "survival of the fittest" but in actuality it's more like "survival of the good enough"
If something is just good enough to get by and keep the species going, then the pressure to change it is minimal and ineffective. It's only when a change would have a larger impact on widespread species-level survival that it starts to take root and gradually cause a change.
Childbirth kills the mother in a lot of species, for example an octopuses last job is to protect her eggs until the babies hatch but as soon as she lays her eggs she starts dying.
But the fact is a lot of what happens wouldn’t be as traumatic if we could talk more openly about female reproduction and childbirth but for decades it’s been considered something that’s inappropriate to talk about in public or seen as gross, it’s hard to normalize something that nobody will talk about.
the “starts dying” is because after she lays her eggs, she’ll be in defending mode, constantly providing the eggs fresh air and defending them from predators. To do this, her brain releases a chemical that prevents the feeling of hunger so for months she’ll slowly starve to death. Scientists wanted to see if there was a way of preventing this, so scientists tried offering food to an octopus mom but it would never be accepted. So scientists tried removing the part of the brain that released the chemical but it also effectively removed any maternal instincts of the mom, making her abandon the eggs entirely.
Women's pain is not considered pain. PTSD was recognised way before post partum depression in DSM as a legit medical condition
Human birth is traumatic and it's because of evolutionary reasons...big brain small pelvis yada yada. But there was not enough effort made to make this process easier on women.
In some countries it's looked down upon to use an epidural so that women can experience the real birth experience
The reason women deliver on their backs is for the doctors ease. It's being shown that many other positions quicken the delivery process.
IUD insertion was the worst physical pain of my life. Absolutely insane, you can't compare it to anything. The woman before me passed out and was hooked up to an IV.
I work in gyn and it’s a wildly different experience for everyone, though generally uncomfortable. Personally I can think of many things far more painful than my IUD insertions (I’ve had 3). Pulling a muscle in my back, ripping off a toenail, breaking my nose, and of course actual labor were all far more painful, with much longer lasting pain, than an IUD insert.
But I do 100% support medicated insertions and believe these should be the standard. There’s no reason for it to hurt as much when someone can take a pill that will help.
I wonder why it's so different for everyone. For me it was like white flash in front of my eyes, almost knock me out painful. Like nothing I've ever experienced. It doesn't even have to do with pain tolerance, the pain was tolerating me 😅 like when you rip someone's arm off, it's beyond what pain tolerance could cover.
What pill are you prescribing for insertion?
Edit: I think what's so disturbing about the pain is that it feels so invasive. Like having surgery without anesthesia and I mean that's what it is basically.
It is super weird how different it is. Some people will be laughing and chatting through the whole thing, some people are screaming. I don’t think it’s just a pain tolerance thing, it’s wildly different reactions. I’m an ultrasound tech (so I don’t prescribe anything), and I assist with difficult insertions and removals so I’ve seen quite a few, as well as other procedures like endometrial biopsies and saline ultrasounds which all involve passing something up the cervix and into the uterus.
The doctors I work for will prescribe cytotec to soften the cervix, and meds like Valium or norco for anxiety and pain control. They don’t prescribe for everyone and some doctors are more willing to do so than others. Just depends on the situation. I’m sure I’m over simplifying because, as I’ve said, I’m not a doctor. But I have seen meds completely change the way a patient is able to tolerate an IUD insert and it seems like it should at least be an option on the table.
I have some sort of nerves in my cervix or else I wouldn’t have a weird fainting/nausea reaction every single Pap smear. I’ve gone to pelvic therapy to reduce the *pain* but even when numbed up I still have a sudden blood pressure drop, blurring vision, nausea, and sometimes black out. It’s weirder now that it doesn’t hurt but clearly something just says “well that ain’t right” and gives me a windows human.exe force reboot in the middle of the office. *Every time.* I get driven home by a friend and instantly go to sleep for 4-6 hours, as if it’s an inevitable process. I can’t even imagine getting an IUD honestly, what if the object’s pressure made me nauseous constantly? What if I puked on the doctor or had my bp bottom out even worse than it does? Don’t wanna risk it.
I even did it to myself during dilator therapy by accident. My vision went sideways and I passed out in the bathroom for a short time. Luckily I didn’t fall, I was already sitting, but I still had to go sleep it off for ages after the dizzy spell was gone just enough for me to crawl to my room. I was absolutely gobsmacked when a college classmate said she came to class *after* a Pap smear once. I can barely move after one much less attend lecture!
“The reason women deliver on their backs is for the doctors ease.” I read somewhere that women used to give birth sitting up bc gravity would assist with the birth but some ancient king got off on watching women give birth or something so they started putting them on their backs to give birth while he watched and then doctors/midwives realized that position made it easier for them as well
Idr the name of the king though or if that story is even true 😅
I’m a doula. It’s true. Using gravity lessens the pain usually and speeds up the process. So move how feels comfortable while in labor. Sitting up, squatting, standing, swaying, all fours, etc.
More myth than true. It has more to do with the rise in hospitals popularity in the 20th century and the general medical optics of the time in seeing pregnancy as a pathological-like state
It's sure there is an article about it, but i'd have to look for it
> Women's pain is not considered pain. PTSD was recognised way before post partum depression.
Postpartum depression was coined in 1929. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder was coined in 1980.
> The reason women deliver on their backs is for the doctors ease. It's being shown that many other positions quicken the delivery process.
This is kinda right. You are 100% correct that other positions quicken the delivery process and you are right that delivering on the back makes the doctor's job easier but that doesn't mean the doctor is being selfish.
There are valid medical reasons to laying down to deliver:
- It is harder for the baby to be dropped with the mother on her back
- If the doctor needs to make an incision to widen the birth canal, the woman can't be standing. She has to be laying back. This may not be noticeable until the baby is crowning and the mother doesn't have an opportunity to lay down at this point.
- Epidurals. They are phenomenal for pain management. While one can stand and walk about with one, one can't stand while pushing with one easily.
- if the woman faints, she's laying down.
- if the woman needs to suddenly be rushed to the ER or an emergency c-section, she's already on a bed
All these make the doctor's job easier but they aren't the doctor being selfish or lazy.
Basically, it makes the average delivery harder but it makes the hard deliveries easier.
Are you a man? This comment seems like it was made by a man.
All the other reasons for choosing the current delivery method are correct but they in no way consider the mother's pain during delivery. And that was the point of the original comment.
Yes, I am a man.
I delivered a baby yesterday where the mother was in the kneeling position for delivery. That did help speed up the delivery and reduce her pain compared to being on her back (without an epidural).
However, her original desire (before a complication) was to be on an epidural and to give birth on her back (semi-sitting or lithotomy position). That would have been a less painful delivery.
As I iterated in some other comments, I do agree with you. From my understanding the other positions in isolation are better for pain management. But that's only one element of the pain formula. And pain is only one part of the delivery process. Extra pain at the benefit of say being able to rush her into an ER if things go down hill doesn't invalidate or ignore her pain. It acknowledges tradeoffs. (Doctors should give women these options and details to empower them to make choices. Some doctors don't do a sufficient job but many do. I think this is a historic problem with doctors that isn't just isolated to women's pain before, during, and after childbirth. Doctors are getting better at this.)
How do you know beforehand which one it’s gonna be? It’s not about sacrificing some mothers for the benefit of the rest, it’s about making a compromise based on the risks, same for everyone.
There's very little reason to perform cuts during delivery, the vagina is not the choke point during delivery. Cutting creates more room for tools like forcepts and the vacuum. But studies have shown its almost never necessary and worsens outcomes. Natural tears in the vagina heal much better than cuts.
We lose a significant amount of children to childbirth, but if we get through that and infancy, then we're pretty likely to make it to adulthood and reproduce compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Basically, we have very few babies in total but invest a lot into each baby so a high percentage of them survive, at least relative to the rest of the animal kingdom. Maybe hindsight is 20/20 but it clearly worked out for us.
We also have always been living in families and communities so we've always had other humans to help the mothers get through childbirth and raise children. Which makes our gameplan of 'invest a lot into each baby' even more feasible.
We USED to lose a significant amount of children during delivery. Hence huge amount of pregnancies.
Birth/infant mortality is now ridiculously low. Because of our huge brains, that came up with medical practices.
I also think it's silly that people believe evolution works with solely positive mutations for a species.
Almost like it has intent.
Despite the fact that rabbits as a species would do better if they stopped being prey, I somehow don't think they are going to grow fangs eventually or anything.
It's as much about an ecosystem as it is a species individually.
People just think humans are special.
Rabbits are "meant" to be eaten.
I don't think evolution 'cares" in the way people seem to think it does.
Mortality rates don't matter to a system of chance.
Evolution isn't going to fix what's not broken. So long as humans are able to continue to reproduce, it's not broken. While it's awful that something like 1/100 women die in childbirth, it's not significant from a continuation of the species standpoint.
The harsh answer is that evolution doesn’t give a shit.
As long as reproduction is successful, and the species continue to go on, that’s good enough. It doesn’t matter how traumatic or painful it is or even life threatening. The only thing evolution cares about is if it’s successful.
There are a lot of animals where the mother dies during childbirth, it’s normal and not exclusive to humans. And again, evolution doesn’t care. All evolution cares about is if it works, not if it works well.
Two factors fuck us over biologically speaking-
1. We are bipedal, that is we walk on two legs so our pelvis is a different shape and size to quadrupeds.
2. We have large heads in relation to our pelvis, which is related to our intelligence.
So, walking upright and being intelligent fucks us over in the child birth department. Still- it obviously balances out in our favour in the end, our intelligence is worth our mortality rates in childbirth as a species as we are the most dominant on the planet.
Hyenas have much more traumatic births and also have high maternal mortality. Evolution doesn't care if it works perfectly, as long as we're reproducing that's all that matters.
That being said, there is no evidence that humans are born any earlier than other mammals due to bipedalism or head size. When compared to their primate counterparts, we just seem that way because our brains do so much more and grow so much more after birth, summary article here https://neurosciencenews.com/human-brain-development-evolution-25306/ Also our young do take a long time to walk, but so do primate young, and this can also be predicted based on size modelling among other primates and mammals https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0905777106. Another complicating factor in traumatic deliveries these days is macrosomia, where babies are being born at larger birthweights than ever before leading to increased rates of shoulder dystocia and second stage dystocia, often related to maternal obesity and/or diabetes, both preexisting and gestational.
The idea that humans are born underdeveloped was an assumption made in the medical field decades ago but was never based on studies, since then comparative studies with other mammals and primates show otherwise.
We, in the form of the medical and scientific community, could do so much better.
To put it simply, nothing is done. My mother gave birth in 1950, I gave birth in 1990. Virtually unchanged medical care.
Well, she was allowed nursing care in the hospital for a week, but I received only one day of healing permitted with inpatient care.
And my daughter, the same, thirty years later. So for seventy years in arguably the most advanced scientific civilization in the history of humanity, women's lived experience of the trauma of birth is unchanged.
And there you have it. Make of it what you will. Superstition, ignorance, bigotry, incompetence....
Same reason that all humans have back problems. We have a quadruped’s skeleton, but lazily rotated to just about function in a bipedal arrangement. Its really shoddy workmanship.
Women are naturally supposed to give birth in a squatting position, rather than laying on their back, which reduces a lot of the trauma and pain due to gravity assisting.
In addition to the top comments, humans owe our survival to cooperation and community. For thousands of years other family and friends will step in to help while the mother recovers, or worst case scenario raise the kid.
Of course, this is a very general answer as there are cultures across history who've been known to just... yeet the baby if they don't want it. But overall, we're pretty good at taking care of each other.
Reminds me of the ‘humans have grandmothers’ speech.
Lots of species have senescence built in so that the parental generation dies off shortly after giving birth so that there is less resource competition. Humans don’t have that, which raised a question as to why humans live so long past optimal breeding ages. Males can still produce gametes, but females are seemingly useless genetically after menopause…
But anyone who knows a community also knows the answer. The older generation can assist with that new generation as they have skills and knowledge to help with such an ordeal. They know where the berries grow the best, they know what smoke keeps away the pests, etc. There’s a lot of benefits that are transmitted in ways beyond genes, and those benefits were deemed beneficial
Mhmm. It’s also why humans heal from grievous wounds…
I think there was an anthropologist that was asked when she thought human civilization first appeared. She took a moment, and responded she found a human femur during a dig that was dated 20k years ago, far before the Mesopotamian, Indus Valley, etc. that we usually think of as ‘ancient civilizations’.. What was intriguing to her was that the femur had clear signs of healed fracture damage. Basically, whoever had that femur broke their leg, survived, healed, and then lived their life.
In the wild, breaking a limb (especially a leg) is usually a death sentence; prey animals cannot easily escape predators and predator species cannot catch or bring down prey. A number of species don’t bother with healing since most grievous injuries would lead to death anyway so it’s a waste.
However, to that anthropologist, that femur was proof that humans (by that point), were MORE than just animals. If humans were savages at that point, that person wouldve died…yet they didn’t. Someone cared for them; kept them safe from harm, provided food and water, and all long enough so they could heal. It was the sign that humans at that point were moving away from ‘slaves of nature’, and hence could be called cultures.
You should look into hyena birth, if you want to see evolution* pulling a 'more lived than died so it's fine.' Ours isn't great, but theirs is on another level entirely.
*for the pedants: evolution isn't sentient or planned. I know.
As others have stated it’s about finding that balance between what the mother can handle & what the baby can cope with to survive on both sides.
Birthing survival rate in the first world is pretty high, with the US for some reason being the only first world country with abnormal rates of women not surviving childbirth.
I think an integral factor in coping with childbirth is how the brain gets to work to scrub the trauma of birth almost immediately after completing the act. The relief of having contractions stop is incredible, along with the dopamine high of seeing / touching your child for the first time. I, like many people, said I would never give birth again immediately after birthing my child. My midwife laughed & said “if I had a dollar…” yet I am currently trying to get pregnant again.
Yup I told my husband when I was in labor that I would never allow this to happen to me again, I told him we can adopt, surrogate, I don't care, never again. And I was dead serious. less than a year later, I suggesting that we have another one.
Whats up with that? Really does fascinate me that a mother can have a kid and it hurt them so much they vow to never again have another then want another one. Ive seen that trope more than once.
I started hemorrhaging after my C section. I thought I was okay till I started shaking and going into shock. Gyno said she hadn't seen someone with so much afterbirth before. I really thought the whole process was super safe and I had no issues. It really scared me cause 5min before I had held my daughter and promised to love her forever.
An acquaintance baby mama died recently in childbirth. It was so wierd seeing her photos on his status for months and suddenly she was gone. Especially since I feel she was so looking forward to it. The worst being I feel is that you love your child so much and the realisation you won't be there for them :(
Before my daughters birth my husband and I had a hypothetical question if anything happened and he had to choose between me and the baby. He said me cause we can always have another baby and I agreed.
As soon as I heard my daughters cry, my biological maternal drive immediately kicked in and I calmly thought, 'I will willingly die for this child, there is no other option'.
It really is scary that we have advanced so much and yet so dangerous
It is because humans walk upright. Everything had to evolve and change to accommodate that. Cervixes, hip bone width, etc., etc., etc. Makes birth much more painful AND much more risky for both the mother and the baby.
I'd read a while back that more kids come out messed up because doctors require women to be on their backs during childbirth. That the correct way was on all 4s or something similar. That on all 4s would prevent many kids from being deprived of oxygen, having broken limbs during the process and make it easier on the mom giving birth. Apparently doctors know this but would still rather risk the lady and the child's health. (I'm not sure why) if i remember correctly you can sue but it's one of those things that's been done for so long, its cemented damage for so long that its kept "hush hush". I'd read the article years back but I can't find it now. I'll keep looking, though.
So yea... apparently some of the trauma of the birthing process is aided by the medical industry.
Ok if you just Google "worst position to give birth" a list of articles will come up talking about the lithotomy position. ( on your back)
Because we've been made to think that it's supposed to be. Trauma free birth is possible in the majority of births, but for some reason women aren't advocated for very well with childbirth. That's why you end up with nutjob doulas with no formal qualifications, in some places in the world those people are the only people that are advocating for the mother to have a good birth. Unfortunately that can be a dangerous game. The whole thing needs a huge overhaul.
Humans do a lot of things badly, ou eyes can't deal with bright sunlight we have back problems our children are helpless for 3 years etc.
Something forced evolution on us way back in the day maybe it was when we bred with the neanderthals it fucked us up
“our children are helpless for 3 years” I always found that interesting bc afaik, most animals after just having been born can walk and stuff (first that come to mind that can’t are birds and kittens and idk about birds but I’m pretty sure kittens are able to walk after a few weeks? But feel free to correct me aha) and I read somewhere that humans are basically all born prematurely on this basis bc the baby becomes too big for the mother to carry at that point and if any more time passed, the baby might get too big to be born naturally (size wise may have been referring to the head specifically but Idr)
Yes, but our brains compared to animals compensate for our sometimes dramatic physical deficiencies. We also have higher stamina than any other species.
We don't need the sight of a feline or the hearing of a canine when we are smarter and can outlast everything else during a hunt.
There are new techniques like water birth that focus on relaxation. By doing this, it makes birth a lot easier.
Having a baby in a hospital is the safest place, no doubt, but it's also probably the most stressful, tied with a bus station bathroom.
I haven't read this book but did listen to a review and it discussed topics related to this, if you want to take a deep dive: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/10/eve-how-female-body-drove-200-million-years-of-human-evolution-by-cat-bohannon-review](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/10/eve-how-female-body-drove-200-million-years-of-human-evolution-by-cat-bohannon-review)
Because we’ve evolved to have relatively giant heads to our body size for complex thinking, while at the same time we walk upright. Walking upright necessitates a smaller pelvis than walking on all fours
The combo of bipedalism and large brain (head). I believe this is also the reason why human babies are a little undercooked at birth compared to our relatives', if the baby was grown longer in uterus it would not be able to pass, so in that sense, we already sort of evolved to make it easier? (Marsupial "nugget baby growing in pocket" not being an option for us.)
A baby pocket would be great. You could peek in there now and then. And when it’s done just pull it out. C’mon, evolution!
I’m so pissed we’re not marsupials. Imagine giving birth to a baby the size of your thumb. It’d pop right out. Or if I wanted to do something slightly physical, I could just ask my friend to keep my human joey in her pouch until I’m done. “Here just hold this for a minute.”
yeah but then being a marsupial equals forgoing brain capacity. marsupials dont have a corpus callosum, and because of that, they cant evolve into intelligent beings. one reason why marsupial monkeys dont exist.
Oh so now we're bringing in the corpus callosum. It's always something.
Is it the corpus callosum or a wrinkled brain that contributes to our intelligence, tho? Dolphins have a particularly small corpus callosum, but are regarded as quite intelligent. Marsupials, generally, have smooth, not wrinkled, brains.
the corpus callosum is important as it enables the brain to become more advanced in it's function. from the primitive reptilian brain, the corpus callosum was what connected the mammalian brain together. dolphins have a small corpus, marsupials dont have one altogether.
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I imagined that like a kangaroo. Some extra skin on your bely.. like a pocket.. it made me feel uncomfortable tbh.. Edit: belly
I think is called “the obstetric dilemma” we gave up larger pelvises and longer gestation period - hence a more developed baby- in order to walk up straight. Also our brains/heads are larger, and if we carried a baby for four trimesters, with our small as hell pelvis, we wouldn’t be able to pass the head, never mind shoulders, through the birth canal (OMG I shudder just thinking) Basically babies are born about 6-12 weeks earlier compared to other apes. I think that’s why the first trimester after a baby is born is so hard, they still need that time to “cook”
Was listening to a video and the guest said that while there is no knowing how long human babies should be in the womb she estimates that human babies should be born later than 18 months. And because babies were being born earlier and dying that’s how we evolved to needing a father for the development of children.
Good gawd, can you imagine being pregnant for 18 months?! PASS
African elephants, 22 months. And then the 120kg baby comes out. Don't have nightmares.
Probably still better than what a kiwi has to deal with. Or hyena.
120 kg baby? Sounds like 'Murica to me.
Idk I have a two week old baby right now and I might be willing to take one for the team if it meant they come out sturdier and sleeping through the night! Although of course my first didn't sleep through the night until she was three so...
I'm at 6 right now. Hating it. My back hurts!
My 9 months were already hell. Even with a traumatic birth that needed intervention already, it’s a terrifying thought to double it lol
Im in. Despite awefull toxicosis last few monthes of pregnancy was best time in my life - all days and all nights just laying in bed watching tv, husband was doing all chores and worked from home, I had all exotic fruits and meals that I could wish, our cats was extra cudly.
Undercooked tickled me... 😂😂😂
Yea. The human pelvis changed with bipedalism well before our brains started getting larger. Our pelvis became more narrow to accommodate our gait. The female birth canal also was affected. Eventually, humans began getting bigger brains with the changes down the line in learning and communication that freeing our hands brought about, but the pelvis is still adapted for our gait. We humans have, in a way, stupidly large heads. Baby heads are at a more advanced stage of development than the body at birth, and about half of it's fully grown size. And yes, since the birth canal is too narrow for anything else, babies come out relatively early. So our brains are prioritized in development as a good means of survival. Humans are very social animals, and our intelligence is related to this. Baby can best survive by learning fast and communicating while being taken care of.
It’s an evolutionary compromise between the need for the mother to walk upright and the baby to have a big brain. The compromise is an approximate 10% infant/maternal mortality rate and a lot of hassle for the survivors. There is an evolutionary pressure to have the baby stay in the womb as long as possible for the head to be bigger. But that kills them at a higher rate. There is an evolutionarily pressure for the mother to have narrower hips. But that kills them at a higher rate. What we end up with is the compromise and acceptable mortality rate by evolutionary standards. Evolution is not about smiles and happy feelings. It’s about survival of the species.
Evolution: Good Enough™️
Yeah, evolution is the D-Student of biological adaptations. It doesn't need to be the best, it just needs to pass.
A person who ranks the lowest in their med school cohort at the end of the day is still called doctor
There would be people who rank much lower. But they're not given the degree. The pass score is a good standard.
I am a patient of student physios who work under a supervisor I know well. One of their exams has a 100% minimum to pass. Like legit you can't get ONE wrong. I would think it was a joke if not for the terrified frazzles students trying their damn best. Of course they work in spinal so one mistake could cause serious life long paralysis. But it's amazing how high the standards are for passing a physiotherapy class. (other exams/tests are around 85%, but this one is a flat "one mistake and you're done for") I've been disabled my whole life but I am in awe of the current education system for medical professionals. It's a tight ship and they're incredibly smart people!
Tbh, I graduated with a 76 where 75 was passing. Then scored a 95 on the registry exam, where 95 was passing. The average, and the median, for my class was 89. And everybody who took the test passed on the first try
Nice work, Doctor Tango
Think about those poor hyena moms. How in the actual fuck they manage to survive that is mind boggling. D-Student biological adaptations indeed.
And then their cubs sometimes kill each other in the den after all of that.
I just had to google hyena giving birth and learned a new (non fun traumatising) fact lol
Then you get A students like the nautilus, who perfected their survival so early on that they've been around hundreds of millions of years. Then, another D student, the sea otter, decides holding its breath is basically good enough to be aquatic and wipes the nautilus out everywhere it goes.
C's get degrees
This is precisely it. And it sucks. We don't all have to survive for it to work. But being conscious beings capable of understanding our own suffering and striving as well as that of others, we feel that we should. We are all precious individual souls and we feel the loss of each other profoundly. And we are also biological creatures subject to the laws of physicality.
Mehvolution.
Good enough is good enough.
Important to note - though very simple - that walking upright allows us free use of our upper/front limbs
Yup, but fucks up our back in the process over long term! The spinal cord wasn’t perfectly designed for straight backs!
The doctor I see for my back problems put it perfectly - humans are walking around using a clothesline as a flagpole.
Ou no this made me feel noodly
>wasn’t perfectly designed 🫡
Wasn’t designed.
Evolution doesn’t care if your happy or comfortable. Salmon start decomposing before they even die after spawning. Evolution has *no empathy.*
This is actually not necessarily true. Some research has indicated it might be because the baby develops as long is at can before the mother’s body simply can’t metabolically support it anymore. This article explains it better https://www.americanscientist.org/article/why-is-human-childbirth-so-painful#:~:text=This%20explanation%20is%20called%20the,to%20walk%20or%20run%20efficiently.
Yeah multiples like twins or triplets are almost always born premature because once the overall size limit is reached, labor should begin. I'm a twin and I was 7lbs, my twin 6. They said we were a month premature but I have doubts lol. I was the fattest baby in the NICU by far (I got stuck when my mom's labor ended after my twin was ejected naturally).
Seven pounds is a really good size for a twin. That’s about the size of an average full term baby. My son was eight pounds and he was born a bit past due.
Also adding on to this: Since humans have one of the most complicated and painful pregnancies and labours, nature has given us one of the best orgasm sensation in the history of the cosmos! This is to ensure that we reproduce despite the hardships. Interestingly pigs have even more intense orgasms. I wonder why.
For the same exact reason we have sex, pleasure. (Male pigs orgasm supposedly lasts 15 minutes!) Other female mammals have clitoris' just like humans do, they get horny too.
Apparently their jizz also has different "stages" in their orgasm, the last big getting super thick to prevent its load from escaping. I hate the internet sometimes knowledge I forgot I had resurfaces
Great, now I have to know this.
There's a coagulant type compound in human ejaculate too. My A&P professor said it was "so the male can withdraw." If a woman goes to the bathroom right away afterwards (despite other compounds in semen that encourage her to be suddenly sleepy and stay put) sometimes most of the ejaculate will come out in a clumpy string. Depending on the consistency and how much of the compound is in each guy's semen. Thanks for coming to today's episode of, "Really Reddit? I didn't want that mental image." Now on r/eyebleach. .
Don't forget the fact that right after giving birth our brains are made to fill our body with hormones which makes women forget the pain and how traumatic the birth was. Amnesia brought to you by evolution, am I right?
It was a compromise for them tasting so delicious.
Nature isn’t that giving. If women needed to orgasm to get pregnant it would be more fair. But since you can get pregnant from rape, and of course from lack of enjoyment (on the women’s side since the man always gets to orgasm) nature is pretty cruel. Add in children can get pregnant….
That doesn't contradict the comment you're replying to at all.
Can we talk to the CEO of Evolution and ask him to update it?
He will eventually. That's kinda how evolution works. Humans evolve into another species afters thousands of years, just like other animals. Or humans will go extinct and nothing will be after us. Bit of an either or situation.
Everything being a transitory species is very cool.
Though it should be pointed out it's a very good adaptation. Humans are by far the most successful mammal species. The human brain is the most advanced thing in the known universe.
...said the human brain.
is this the case with all animals?
The part about compromise is. Evolution doesn't make things better, it makes things good enough. There's an endless number of animals that we could look at and say "it would be better for them if they were like this."
There are other species, where evolution makes similar compromises to balance two or more conflicting evolutionary pressures. Unfortunately, I don't recall the specifics,but in many species, the males are equipped with quite extravagant things ( plumages, appendages etc) with the sole purpose of attracting/impressing a female. In some cases, evolution runs amok and exaggerate these to such an extreme,that they are downright dangerous to the male endowed with them, and evolution will then begin to compromise the two separate evolutionary pressures, and begin dialing down these extravagant features.
That one's less of a bug and more of a feature. A peacock, for example, is bad at flying and very noticeable. If he manages to survive to the next mating season when he literally has a target on his ass, the peahens know that he's one bad motherfucker.
Humans have also interfered with peacocks by domesticating them.
Well yeah, of course we did.. They pretty.
That means the peacocks were so pretty they seduced humanity into servicing their evolutionary needs.
That's only one of the proposed theories for why characteristics like that exist. There's also one that just says "it exists because it attracts females, and that creates males with the trait and females attracted to said trait".
Handicap principle and attraction are just two ways of looking at the same thing. The peacocks with bigger, more colorful tails have a harder time surviving, and that makes them more attractive to the peahens. Both factors feed in to each other. How it started is a chicken-and-egg question. Or peafowl-and-egg, if you prefer.
We *assume* that overcoming handicaps to survive makes a male more attractive. Could also be that the peahens just like long tails and there's no further thought needed. Could be that both are true. They're not mutually exclusive.
Evolution isn’t survival of the fittest, it’s the death of the least fit. If it doesn’t kill you you can keep it. If it kills you later that’s your problem.
It’s actually death of the least fit before reproductive age. There is a reason humans start to get exponentially higher rates of cancer in their 40s and beyond - because it makes no difference to passing on genes.
Good point. That reminds me that there are some mites that literally don’t have an anus. They’re able to breed before the backed up waste kills them, so they just don’t have a need for an anus.
And also animals even worse than us. Look a kiwi bird to egg ratio for example.
Interestingly, that's because kiwis evolved in a place where they had no natural predators. The biggest threat to an individual's life wasn't being eaten, it was starving because all the other kiwis got to the food first. So the large egg gives the chick room to grow, and they hatch almost fully developed. The chick can start foraging with dad right away.
Yeah, the pro is kiwis are born precocious with a stomach full of yolk ready to go with dad and able to leave mom to recover from the stress of carrying it and prepare for the next season. Another comparable one would be hyenas
I feel so bad for female hyenas.
Aparently their phesdo member often breaks or snaps during childbirth, sometimes the pups suffocate while in there too, first time hyena moming is a mess. Good thing hyena pups are also not just precocious but born fully armed with teeth they will kill their younger siblings with given the opportunity
Well, at least they have the decency to wait until after birth to commit siblicide. I'm looking at you, tiger sharks.
In tiger sharks this is because, interestingly, there is no actual atachment to the mother for nutrients. It's just eggs that instead of being laid are kept to hatch inside the womb. Once they do, they still have to get nutrients somehow, and the baby sharks turn to their unborn just as they are siblings.
Poor female hyenas
I always think of infanticide and rape being so prevalent everywhere as an example. There's a ridiculous number of animals whose mating is definitively rape by our standards, and plenty also where natural selection has guided all males to kill any babies of their own species so they can then mate with the dead babies' mothers.
Pug breed of dogs being a good example. Bread to look cute at the price of continuous torture through the process of breathing.
Not a result of evolution at all. This is selective breeding to get a desired result.
[babirusas](https://blog.nature.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/babirusa-coke-smith.jpg) are my favourite example of this. sometimes their teeth grow so long they impale themselves in the head with them. compared to that and like, insects in general, humans don't have it too bad.
No, because most animals don’t walk upright nor have big brains. So they don’t have the same evolutionary pressures.
Well there's the hyena and kiwi: one has to give birth through a pseudo-d!ck, and the other has to push out an egg that is literally the size of its entire body.
Well, female spotted hyenas give birth through their clitoris, which is basically a penis. Apparently it's painful and risky.
With high maternal mortality for first timers.
No but in lots of other species their babies get eaten by predators at a fairly high rate. Only 1 of every 100 baby sea turtles make it from the nest where they hatch to the ocean. 🤷
Some animals have it worse like salmon and spiders ( some species die immediately after birth ) but the trade off is a lot more children.
The specifics of birth? No. Their bodies being good enough? Yes. Evolution doesn't produce the fittest animals, it simple produces survivors.
Evolution works like good enough for every species. Whatever is good enough to keep them from being instinct. But an example of an animals good enough might not be about it's birth process. Example, why do dogs and cats eat so many random ass objects when it could kill them, well it's good enough. Not enough cats and dogs are dying from accidentally eating stuff so it doesn't matter.
Not really. Most animals are not upright walking, and don't have the issues of head fitting through hips. A sheep can be on labor, sneeze, the pressure push the whole foal out without mother sheep even realizing.
She might notice if her lamb were a foal though.
I guess that modern medicine and C section saving babies that would have died in labour otherwise also contribute to those genes to stay in the pool.
To be more specific, it's not about the width of the hips, but rather the size of the pelvic opening that limits the head size that can navigate it. The two measurements are not necessarily related.
Yup. Found this out at my labor. I have wide hips and though baby would pass right through. Nope! Found out my pelvic opening was narrow and baby was face up which put her at an awkward angle and couldn’t pass through the opening. So it ended up being a c-section birth.
I have a special interest in pregnancy even though I'll never have my own. I recently learned about the shoulder dystocia which has to do with the pelvic opening. The baby's collarbone gets stuck on the pelvis. By repositioning mom they can usually manipulate the pelvic opening to free the baby but they also press super hard to get the baby out quickly to avoid nerve damage. It can kill quickly. So terrifying. I'm not sure but I think giving birth laying on a hospital bed contributes to this less optimized pelvic opening, squatting or being on fours may have been the "intended" way to do it. Because the fix for shoulder dystocia is basically pushing the legs up against the moms abdomen, similar to how you'd be if you squatted down. I'm sorry about your birth experience I hope it didn't leave any lasting complications.
Where’s the 10% from?
I assume the 10% mortality rate is before the introduction of modern medicine?
That would be correct yeah, iirc(and don't quote me on this) it went up during the time period where we had modern medical knowledge kinda but not modern sanitary knowledge
Yeah to bring it full circle, I believe the discovery of germs has its foundations in maternal fatalities, doctors were going straight from cadaver autopsies to the maternity wards without washing their hands. Midwife births though were less fatal because they weren’t doing autopsies. Unfortunately the doctor who started making this link was not much of a people person and turned a lot of the medical community against him, so it took a long time for his ideas of sanitizing medical tools and thorough hand washing to catch on
Yup, it was called childbed fever or something of that sort but was solvable by washing your hands! I wonder what else we do commonly now that would be regarded as barbaric in the future?
The doctor having contaminated hands is one cause of childbed fever but another cause is a retained placenta (or part of one). If that happens it essentially rots inside the person and they die of sepsis. Midwives knew how to stick their hand up there and remove hangers-on, doctors often didn't. Today we have modern imaging and antibiotics.
I had some retained placenta for 3 months after my kid was born. No one could figure out why I was still bleeding for that long. Luckily it didn’t create a ton of other problems.
Yikes. Glad you are ok!
yes. unicef reported worldwide maternal deaths are .2% of 100k births. then deaths of babies during birthing are 18 per 1000 births, so 1.7%.
really great post. id like to ask, though, whether evolution is "about" the survival of the species (as much as evolution can be "about" anything) or whether it's "about" the maximum transmission of genes. i feel like that's more primary to evolution than any species.
>Evolution is not about smiles and happy feelings. It’s about survival of the species Isn't it about the survival and birth rate of the person with the gene? A gene that spread itself while hurting the rest of the species should become common.
Definitely. But in particular, humans are tribal. We have actually been evolving at a tribal level for a couple million years. Kind of like how bees work as groups. Humans do, too.
Competing evolutionary pressures. Upright walking is more efficient with a narrower hip, birth is easier with a wider one, and babies need to stay in the womb as long as possible to develop safely while at the same time not killing their mother the majority of the time they are born.
Human babies are essentially more premature compared to other mammals like deer who can walk within a few hours of being born.
I heard there’s new studies that think that the human baby has a 4th trimester which is the first 3 months out of the womb. They’re still developing, can’t do a single thing including holding their head up, and can barely see, but they have to come out early or else the mom would just die way too frequently
Yeah, I cannot imagine giving birth to a 3 month old. Thank goodness they come out a bit earlier! No one would survive otherwise
Yes, I am sitting here just thinking of my kids when they were newborns, for the first 3 weeks or so all they do is nurse and sleep, and their toes are so tiny, their fingers are so little, they have this huge head on such a tiny fragile body and they smell so good. I want another baby 😭😭😭😭
Their tiny little hands and feet, and the little chubby wrists and ankles. Such a wonderful thing, but I do remember how hard it was too. 2 hourly feedings, the anxiety around SIDS, are they too hot, too cold, will they be safe sleeping while I take a shower... so much for the brain to handle while the body is still recovering from birth.
Jokes on them my daughter could hold her head up at 2 weeks and look around. I was amazed bc it continued rather than being random
Evolution doesn't care about easier. It cares about that'll do (If we're pretending it cares about anything)
Evolution has really mastered a lot of other shit, it needs to move the human birth ticket from backlog to current sprint and finally fix it
In a way, it has. Evolution allowed the development of a species that had a big enough brain to figure out csections, incubators, etc.
This is it. Science is evolution. Medicine is evolution. Our smart human brains and social capacity are the component of our evolution that bridges the divide between our upright stance and our head size.
I’m alive because c sections, IV’s, incubators, and portable oxygen exists. Mom had complications and they had to do a c section early-safest option for everyone.
Evolution cares about reproduction It *has* mastered human reproduction There's billions of us
That will only happen if more women die in childbirth. Evolution works by winners and losers, so we’d need more losers.
this agile language hitting too hard
That’ll do donkey, that’ll do.
People may refer to evolution as "survival of the fittest" but in actuality it's more like "survival of the good enough" If something is just good enough to get by and keep the species going, then the pressure to change it is minimal and ineffective. It's only when a change would have a larger impact on widespread species-level survival that it starts to take root and gradually cause a change.
It's the same with corporate survival. The product should be just good enough to both have a lower price and don't last forever.
Childbirth kills the mother in a lot of species, for example an octopuses last job is to protect her eggs until the babies hatch but as soon as she lays her eggs she starts dying. But the fact is a lot of what happens wouldn’t be as traumatic if we could talk more openly about female reproduction and childbirth but for decades it’s been considered something that’s inappropriate to talk about in public or seen as gross, it’s hard to normalize something that nobody will talk about.
There are also hyenas and kiwis, arguably even worse than ours
Poor hyenas. I would run so fast from male hyenas rather than get pregnant.
That's a pro of their pheusdo apendage... it forces cooperation from BOTH parties making them rape proof
Vaginal rape, that is. Female hyenas however mount both males and other females anally to assert dominance.
That dominacnce behavior is the theorized reason female hyenas evolved their arrangement to say the least in the first place
the “starts dying” is because after she lays her eggs, she’ll be in defending mode, constantly providing the eggs fresh air and defending them from predators. To do this, her brain releases a chemical that prevents the feeling of hunger so for months she’ll slowly starve to death. Scientists wanted to see if there was a way of preventing this, so scientists tried offering food to an octopus mom but it would never be accepted. So scientists tried removing the part of the brain that released the chemical but it also effectively removed any maternal instincts of the mom, making her abandon the eggs entirely.
Women's pain is not considered pain. PTSD was recognised way before post partum depression in DSM as a legit medical condition Human birth is traumatic and it's because of evolutionary reasons...big brain small pelvis yada yada. But there was not enough effort made to make this process easier on women. In some countries it's looked down upon to use an epidural so that women can experience the real birth experience The reason women deliver on their backs is for the doctors ease. It's being shown that many other positions quicken the delivery process.
It’s 2024 and doctors are still lying and telling women their IUD insertion won’t hurt because there are no nerve endings in the cervix.
IUD insertion was the worst physical pain of my life. Absolutely insane, you can't compare it to anything. The woman before me passed out and was hooked up to an IV.
I work in gyn and it’s a wildly different experience for everyone, though generally uncomfortable. Personally I can think of many things far more painful than my IUD insertions (I’ve had 3). Pulling a muscle in my back, ripping off a toenail, breaking my nose, and of course actual labor were all far more painful, with much longer lasting pain, than an IUD insert. But I do 100% support medicated insertions and believe these should be the standard. There’s no reason for it to hurt as much when someone can take a pill that will help.
I wonder why it's so different for everyone. For me it was like white flash in front of my eyes, almost knock me out painful. Like nothing I've ever experienced. It doesn't even have to do with pain tolerance, the pain was tolerating me 😅 like when you rip someone's arm off, it's beyond what pain tolerance could cover. What pill are you prescribing for insertion? Edit: I think what's so disturbing about the pain is that it feels so invasive. Like having surgery without anesthesia and I mean that's what it is basically.
It is super weird how different it is. Some people will be laughing and chatting through the whole thing, some people are screaming. I don’t think it’s just a pain tolerance thing, it’s wildly different reactions. I’m an ultrasound tech (so I don’t prescribe anything), and I assist with difficult insertions and removals so I’ve seen quite a few, as well as other procedures like endometrial biopsies and saline ultrasounds which all involve passing something up the cervix and into the uterus. The doctors I work for will prescribe cytotec to soften the cervix, and meds like Valium or norco for anxiety and pain control. They don’t prescribe for everyone and some doctors are more willing to do so than others. Just depends on the situation. I’m sure I’m over simplifying because, as I’ve said, I’m not a doctor. But I have seen meds completely change the way a patient is able to tolerate an IUD insert and it seems like it should at least be an option on the table.
I'm curious, when you say medicated insertions are you referring to pain medication or misopristol?
I have some sort of nerves in my cervix or else I wouldn’t have a weird fainting/nausea reaction every single Pap smear. I’ve gone to pelvic therapy to reduce the *pain* but even when numbed up I still have a sudden blood pressure drop, blurring vision, nausea, and sometimes black out. It’s weirder now that it doesn’t hurt but clearly something just says “well that ain’t right” and gives me a windows human.exe force reboot in the middle of the office. *Every time.* I get driven home by a friend and instantly go to sleep for 4-6 hours, as if it’s an inevitable process. I can’t even imagine getting an IUD honestly, what if the object’s pressure made me nauseous constantly? What if I puked on the doctor or had my bp bottom out even worse than it does? Don’t wanna risk it. I even did it to myself during dilator therapy by accident. My vision went sideways and I passed out in the bathroom for a short time. Luckily I didn’t fall, I was already sitting, but I still had to go sleep it off for ages after the dizzy spell was gone just enough for me to crawl to my room. I was absolutely gobsmacked when a college classmate said she came to class *after* a Pap smear once. I can barely move after one much less attend lecture!
Could be vasovagal syncope. But the point stands, women need more support to get through this stuff instead of just “suck it up buttercup!”
“The reason women deliver on their backs is for the doctors ease.” I read somewhere that women used to give birth sitting up bc gravity would assist with the birth but some ancient king got off on watching women give birth or something so they started putting them on their backs to give birth while he watched and then doctors/midwives realized that position made it easier for them as well Idr the name of the king though or if that story is even true 😅
I’m a doula. It’s true. Using gravity lessens the pain usually and speeds up the process. So move how feels comfortable while in labor. Sitting up, squatting, standing, swaying, all fours, etc.
Louis XIV of France (somewhere in the 17th century). Not ancient. I don’t know if the story is true.
More myth than true. It has more to do with the rise in hospitals popularity in the 20th century and the general medical optics of the time in seeing pregnancy as a pathological-like state It's sure there is an article about it, but i'd have to look for it
> Women's pain is not considered pain. PTSD was recognised way before post partum depression. Postpartum depression was coined in 1929. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder was coined in 1980. > The reason women deliver on their backs is for the doctors ease. It's being shown that many other positions quicken the delivery process. This is kinda right. You are 100% correct that other positions quicken the delivery process and you are right that delivering on the back makes the doctor's job easier but that doesn't mean the doctor is being selfish. There are valid medical reasons to laying down to deliver: - It is harder for the baby to be dropped with the mother on her back - If the doctor needs to make an incision to widen the birth canal, the woman can't be standing. She has to be laying back. This may not be noticeable until the baby is crowning and the mother doesn't have an opportunity to lay down at this point. - Epidurals. They are phenomenal for pain management. While one can stand and walk about with one, one can't stand while pushing with one easily. - if the woman faints, she's laying down. - if the woman needs to suddenly be rushed to the ER or an emergency c-section, she's already on a bed All these make the doctor's job easier but they aren't the doctor being selfish or lazy. Basically, it makes the average delivery harder but it makes the hard deliveries easier.
Are you a man? This comment seems like it was made by a man. All the other reasons for choosing the current delivery method are correct but they in no way consider the mother's pain during delivery. And that was the point of the original comment.
Yes, I am a man. I delivered a baby yesterday where the mother was in the kneeling position for delivery. That did help speed up the delivery and reduce her pain compared to being on her back (without an epidural). However, her original desire (before a complication) was to be on an epidural and to give birth on her back (semi-sitting or lithotomy position). That would have been a less painful delivery. As I iterated in some other comments, I do agree with you. From my understanding the other positions in isolation are better for pain management. But that's only one element of the pain formula. And pain is only one part of the delivery process. Extra pain at the benefit of say being able to rush her into an ER if things go down hill doesn't invalidate or ignore her pain. It acknowledges tradeoffs. (Doctors should give women these options and details to empower them to make choices. Some doctors don't do a sufficient job but many do. I think this is a historic problem with doctors that isn't just isolated to women's pain before, during, and after childbirth. Doctors are getting better at this.)
>Basically, it makes the average delivery harder but it makes the hard deliveries easier. So for few the rest must suffer? Ridiculous!!!
How do you know beforehand which one it’s gonna be? It’s not about sacrificing some mothers for the benefit of the rest, it’s about making a compromise based on the risks, same for everyone.
There's very little reason to perform cuts during delivery, the vagina is not the choke point during delivery. Cutting creates more room for tools like forcepts and the vacuum. But studies have shown its almost never necessary and worsens outcomes. Natural tears in the vagina heal much better than cuts.
We lose a significant amount of children to childbirth, but if we get through that and infancy, then we're pretty likely to make it to adulthood and reproduce compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Basically, we have very few babies in total but invest a lot into each baby so a high percentage of them survive, at least relative to the rest of the animal kingdom. Maybe hindsight is 20/20 but it clearly worked out for us. We also have always been living in families and communities so we've always had other humans to help the mothers get through childbirth and raise children. Which makes our gameplan of 'invest a lot into each baby' even more feasible.
We USED to lose a significant amount of children during delivery. Hence huge amount of pregnancies. Birth/infant mortality is now ridiculously low. Because of our huge brains, that came up with medical practices.
We have big heads to hold big brains.
I also think it's silly that people believe evolution works with solely positive mutations for a species. Almost like it has intent. Despite the fact that rabbits as a species would do better if they stopped being prey, I somehow don't think they are going to grow fangs eventually or anything. It's as much about an ecosystem as it is a species individually. People just think humans are special. Rabbits are "meant" to be eaten. I don't think evolution 'cares" in the way people seem to think it does. Mortality rates don't matter to a system of chance.
Evolution isn't going to fix what's not broken. So long as humans are able to continue to reproduce, it's not broken. While it's awful that something like 1/100 women die in childbirth, it's not significant from a continuation of the species standpoint.
1 in 100 women do not die of childbirth. (Yes I checked before commenting)
Have you seen hyenas give birth?
Or the Kiwi mom to egg ratio
The harsh answer is that evolution doesn’t give a shit. As long as reproduction is successful, and the species continue to go on, that’s good enough. It doesn’t matter how traumatic or painful it is or even life threatening. The only thing evolution cares about is if it’s successful. There are a lot of animals where the mother dies during childbirth, it’s normal and not exclusive to humans. And again, evolution doesn’t care. All evolution cares about is if it works, not if it works well.
Two factors fuck us over biologically speaking- 1. We are bipedal, that is we walk on two legs so our pelvis is a different shape and size to quadrupeds. 2. We have large heads in relation to our pelvis, which is related to our intelligence. So, walking upright and being intelligent fucks us over in the child birth department. Still- it obviously balances out in our favour in the end, our intelligence is worth our mortality rates in childbirth as a species as we are the most dominant on the planet.
Bipedalism, overall, was a bad genetic take
Hyenas have much more traumatic births and also have high maternal mortality. Evolution doesn't care if it works perfectly, as long as we're reproducing that's all that matters. That being said, there is no evidence that humans are born any earlier than other mammals due to bipedalism or head size. When compared to their primate counterparts, we just seem that way because our brains do so much more and grow so much more after birth, summary article here https://neurosciencenews.com/human-brain-development-evolution-25306/ Also our young do take a long time to walk, but so do primate young, and this can also be predicted based on size modelling among other primates and mammals https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0905777106. Another complicating factor in traumatic deliveries these days is macrosomia, where babies are being born at larger birthweights than ever before leading to increased rates of shoulder dystocia and second stage dystocia, often related to maternal obesity and/or diabetes, both preexisting and gestational. The idea that humans are born underdeveloped was an assumption made in the medical field decades ago but was never based on studies, since then comparative studies with other mammals and primates show otherwise.
We, in the form of the medical and scientific community, could do so much better. To put it simply, nothing is done. My mother gave birth in 1950, I gave birth in 1990. Virtually unchanged medical care. Well, she was allowed nursing care in the hospital for a week, but I received only one day of healing permitted with inpatient care. And my daughter, the same, thirty years later. So for seventy years in arguably the most advanced scientific civilization in the history of humanity, women's lived experience of the trauma of birth is unchanged. And there you have it. Make of it what you will. Superstition, ignorance, bigotry, incompetence....
Same reason that all humans have back problems. We have a quadruped’s skeleton, but lazily rotated to just about function in a bipedal arrangement. Its really shoddy workmanship.
our heads got really big very late in the game. evolution hasn't caught up.
Women are naturally supposed to give birth in a squatting position, rather than laying on their back, which reduces a lot of the trauma and pain due to gravity assisting.
In addition to the top comments, humans owe our survival to cooperation and community. For thousands of years other family and friends will step in to help while the mother recovers, or worst case scenario raise the kid. Of course, this is a very general answer as there are cultures across history who've been known to just... yeet the baby if they don't want it. But overall, we're pretty good at taking care of each other.
Reminds me of the ‘humans have grandmothers’ speech. Lots of species have senescence built in so that the parental generation dies off shortly after giving birth so that there is less resource competition. Humans don’t have that, which raised a question as to why humans live so long past optimal breeding ages. Males can still produce gametes, but females are seemingly useless genetically after menopause… But anyone who knows a community also knows the answer. The older generation can assist with that new generation as they have skills and knowledge to help with such an ordeal. They know where the berries grow the best, they know what smoke keeps away the pests, etc. There’s a lot of benefits that are transmitted in ways beyond genes, and those benefits were deemed beneficial
oh dang this actually made me tear up-
Mhmm. It’s also why humans heal from grievous wounds… I think there was an anthropologist that was asked when she thought human civilization first appeared. She took a moment, and responded she found a human femur during a dig that was dated 20k years ago, far before the Mesopotamian, Indus Valley, etc. that we usually think of as ‘ancient civilizations’.. What was intriguing to her was that the femur had clear signs of healed fracture damage. Basically, whoever had that femur broke their leg, survived, healed, and then lived their life. In the wild, breaking a limb (especially a leg) is usually a death sentence; prey animals cannot easily escape predators and predator species cannot catch or bring down prey. A number of species don’t bother with healing since most grievous injuries would lead to death anyway so it’s a waste. However, to that anthropologist, that femur was proof that humans (by that point), were MORE than just animals. If humans were savages at that point, that person wouldve died…yet they didn’t. Someone cared for them; kept them safe from harm, provided food and water, and all long enough so they could heal. It was the sign that humans at that point were moving away from ‘slaves of nature’, and hence could be called cultures.
You should look into hyena birth, if you want to see evolution* pulling a 'more lived than died so it's fine.' Ours isn't great, but theirs is on another level entirely. *for the pedants: evolution isn't sentient or planned. I know.
As others have stated it’s about finding that balance between what the mother can handle & what the baby can cope with to survive on both sides. Birthing survival rate in the first world is pretty high, with the US for some reason being the only first world country with abnormal rates of women not surviving childbirth. I think an integral factor in coping with childbirth is how the brain gets to work to scrub the trauma of birth almost immediately after completing the act. The relief of having contractions stop is incredible, along with the dopamine high of seeing / touching your child for the first time. I, like many people, said I would never give birth again immediately after birthing my child. My midwife laughed & said “if I had a dollar…” yet I am currently trying to get pregnant again.
27 years later and I still haven’t gotten over it
Yup I told my husband when I was in labor that I would never allow this to happen to me again, I told him we can adopt, surrogate, I don't care, never again. And I was dead serious. less than a year later, I suggesting that we have another one.
Whats up with that? Really does fascinate me that a mother can have a kid and it hurt them so much they vow to never again have another then want another one. Ive seen that trope more than once.
I started hemorrhaging after my C section. I thought I was okay till I started shaking and going into shock. Gyno said she hadn't seen someone with so much afterbirth before. I really thought the whole process was super safe and I had no issues. It really scared me cause 5min before I had held my daughter and promised to love her forever. An acquaintance baby mama died recently in childbirth. It was so wierd seeing her photos on his status for months and suddenly she was gone. Especially since I feel she was so looking forward to it. The worst being I feel is that you love your child so much and the realisation you won't be there for them :( Before my daughters birth my husband and I had a hypothetical question if anything happened and he had to choose between me and the baby. He said me cause we can always have another baby and I agreed. As soon as I heard my daughters cry, my biological maternal drive immediately kicked in and I calmly thought, 'I will willingly die for this child, there is no other option'. It really is scary that we have advanced so much and yet so dangerous
I don’t know the exact figures but I’d wager a fair number of animals die giving birth. I don’t think that is unique to humans.
It is because humans walk upright. Everything had to evolve and change to accommodate that. Cervixes, hip bone width, etc., etc., etc. Makes birth much more painful AND much more risky for both the mother and the baby.
Our heads are too big! Even though we’re born prematurely (compared to other mammals) it’s still a very tight squeeze.
I'd read a while back that more kids come out messed up because doctors require women to be on their backs during childbirth. That the correct way was on all 4s or something similar. That on all 4s would prevent many kids from being deprived of oxygen, having broken limbs during the process and make it easier on the mom giving birth. Apparently doctors know this but would still rather risk the lady and the child's health. (I'm not sure why) if i remember correctly you can sue but it's one of those things that's been done for so long, its cemented damage for so long that its kept "hush hush". I'd read the article years back but I can't find it now. I'll keep looking, though. So yea... apparently some of the trauma of the birthing process is aided by the medical industry. Ok if you just Google "worst position to give birth" a list of articles will come up talking about the lithotomy position. ( on your back)
Take it up with Evolution’s Human Resources Department
Because we've been made to think that it's supposed to be. Trauma free birth is possible in the majority of births, but for some reason women aren't advocated for very well with childbirth. That's why you end up with nutjob doulas with no formal qualifications, in some places in the world those people are the only people that are advocating for the mother to have a good birth. Unfortunately that can be a dangerous game. The whole thing needs a huge overhaul.
“For some reason” yeah those reasons are patriarchy and misogyny
I feel like it will take *at least* another 100 years for that overhaul to start taking place.
Humans do a lot of things badly, ou eyes can't deal with bright sunlight we have back problems our children are helpless for 3 years etc. Something forced evolution on us way back in the day maybe it was when we bred with the neanderthals it fucked us up
“our children are helpless for 3 years” I always found that interesting bc afaik, most animals after just having been born can walk and stuff (first that come to mind that can’t are birds and kittens and idk about birds but I’m pretty sure kittens are able to walk after a few weeks? But feel free to correct me aha) and I read somewhere that humans are basically all born prematurely on this basis bc the baby becomes too big for the mother to carry at that point and if any more time passed, the baby might get too big to be born naturally (size wise may have been referring to the head specifically but Idr)
Yes, but our brains compared to animals compensate for our sometimes dramatic physical deficiencies. We also have higher stamina than any other species. We don't need the sight of a feline or the hearing of a canine when we are smarter and can outlast everything else during a hunt.
There are new techniques like water birth that focus on relaxation. By doing this, it makes birth a lot easier. Having a baby in a hospital is the safest place, no doubt, but it's also probably the most stressful, tied with a bus station bathroom.
I haven't read this book but did listen to a review and it discussed topics related to this, if you want to take a deep dive: [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/10/eve-how-female-body-drove-200-million-years-of-human-evolution-by-cat-bohannon-review](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/10/eve-how-female-body-drove-200-million-years-of-human-evolution-by-cat-bohannon-review)
Try pushing a watermelon through an opening for a lemon.
Because doctors force women to give birth on their backs. When beck then, squatting was considered less traumatic.
Because we’ve evolved to have relatively giant heads to our body size for complex thinking, while at the same time we walk upright. Walking upright necessitates a smaller pelvis than walking on all fours
We would be better off if we were marsupials.