I thought this was about extended gestation at first, which is something I’ve always wondered about: is the whole 9-months thing driven by the baby or the mother? Or more specifically, is 9 months the optimal amount of time for a baby to be in the womb?
Like if we manipulated the hormones / blocked the whole pressure-oxytocin feedback loop on the maternal side to just keep the mother gestating for… 12 months? 15? 3 years?? Would the ‘newborn toddler’ have a hyper-developed brain? Or just a normal brain that lost out on the first 3 years of critical life experience?
If our incubation tech was good enough to fully replace a biological mother… 20 years? …there’s a dystopian sci-fi writing prompt for ya. …or like, the key to super humans.
Or, would shit like the foramen ovale on the fetal side of things just close off anyway and put it into a birth-now-or-die situation?
The limiting factor in utero is the health of the placenta. Past a certain point, the organ no longer functions and the baby does not survive. This is why (at least in the US) inductions are required past a certain point.
I’ve heard that a baby that’s been gestating for a much longer time than 9 months literally wouldn’t fit through the birth canal due to the physical limitation of the width of the mother’s hips. The baby would have to be either artificially gestated (which is some real sci-fi shit, like you’re saying) or the mother would require a C-section, which is generally pretty high-risk and has a 6-month recovery period.
Huh? Csections arent high risk if they are planned, they become high risk when they are an emergency solution to a problem natural birth. Also the recovery period is 4-8 weeks
Full recovery from an incision that cuts through the abdominal muscles will always take longer than the initial recovery period. Keep in mind that most of us can’t just take 6 months off of work, so a lot of recommendations from doctors and surgeons are cognizant of that reality.
Frozen embryo. Meh.
I thought this was about extended gestation at first, which is something I’ve always wondered about: is the whole 9-months thing driven by the baby or the mother? Or more specifically, is 9 months the optimal amount of time for a baby to be in the womb?
Like if we manipulated the hormones / blocked the whole pressure-oxytocin feedback loop on the maternal side to just keep the mother gestating for… 12 months? 15? 3 years?? Would the ‘newborn toddler’ have a hyper-developed brain? Or just a normal brain that lost out on the first 3 years of critical life experience?
If our incubation tech was good enough to fully replace a biological mother… 20 years? …there’s a dystopian sci-fi writing prompt for ya. …or like, the key to super humans.
Or, would shit like the foramen ovale on the fetal side of things just close off anyway and put it into a birth-now-or-die situation?
The limiting factor in utero is the health of the placenta. Past a certain point, the organ no longer functions and the baby does not survive. This is why (at least in the US) inductions are required past a certain point.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9320537/
Hadn’t even considered that - I figured it came down to size constraints or the anatomic changes of the fetus.
Crazy. I wonder if that’s something we could influence.
I’ve heard that a baby that’s been gestating for a much longer time than 9 months literally wouldn’t fit through the birth canal due to the physical limitation of the width of the mother’s hips. The baby would have to be either artificially gestated (which is some real sci-fi shit, like you’re saying) or the mother would require a C-section, which is generally pretty high-risk and has a 6-month recovery period.
Huh? Csections arent high risk if they are planned, they become high risk when they are an emergency solution to a problem natural birth. Also the recovery period is 4-8 weeks
Full recovery from an incision that cuts through the abdominal muscles will always take longer than the initial recovery period. Keep in mind that most of us can’t just take 6 months off of work, so a lot of recommendations from doctors and surgeons are cognizant of that reality.
Yeah it’s super tight squeeze even in normal conditions from a skeletal perspective. Pushing much past 9mo would guarantee a c-section.