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?
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
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?
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
Yeah it’s super tight squeeze even in normal conditions from a skeletal perspective. Pushing much past 9mo would guarantee a c-section.