Birth

My colleague raised questions about the developmental milestones of babies and toddlers this afternoon. Can we imagine what we are able to do after birth? To be honest, not much.

As I reflected on what I managed to do after birth – I had premature birth - I was drawn back to those scenes of National Geographic, where a newborn elephant (not to mention our immediate ancestors chimpanzee) is able to walk with the herd and hold onto his mother on the very first day of life.

To that matter, what are we to think? Are we humans born too soon? Good question – to which I'm afraid the answer is affirmative. In biological or anthropological terms, precocious animals (like us) are born helpless and must be fed and taken care for a long time, whereas altricial species (such as gorilla and elephant) refer to those relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth. The question, as you might then ask, is why we are born so soon, putting ourselves in even more jeopardy in case of premature birth (like me).

For example, a renowned anthropologist has concluded that human beings should have a 21-month gestation period, instead of 9 months in our mothers' womb and 12 months out of the uterus. From my anthropology reading, the most important reasons for our "premature" birth are related to the bipedal gait (walking upright with two rear limbs instead of walking on four) and our large brain. Compare us with the monkeys and the great apes. Their infants are always delivered in an occiput posterior position, facing their mothers. Imagine giving birth to your kid as a monkey mother, inside a forest with enemies around you. The occiput posterior positioning of your baby is the best way for you to guide it out of the birth canal towards your nipples and wipe mucus away from its mouth to assist breathing. You simply do not require assistance. It is much safer to give birth alone, away from your rivals and predators.

For humans, the evolution of a bipedal gait and a large brain has brought about competing demands (or adaptations) in the shape of the human pelvis. The human (female) pelvic outlet became smaller than our primate ancestors, making birth more difficult for humans. To overcome the ordeal of obstructed labour, almost unheard of in other primates, human infant is to be born in an occiput anterior position, facing away from its mother. This creates difficulty for the mother, as attempts to guide her infant out of the birth canal may result in extension of the head and damage to the infant. It is this disadvantage that has resulted in the involvement of others to assist childbirth. Contemporary anthropological studies of aboriginal cultures confirm that assistance during childbirth is universal. Obviously, midwifery has developed not as a result of conscious endeavour on the part of human beings; rather, its origin is in the evolution of human beings, where by a process of natural selection women who were more likely to accept assistance during childbirth were more likely to withstand the rigours of a long labour, and survive. That being said, human babies have to be born early, before getting too large and then obstructed on the way out of the narrow pelvis.

Call it old wives' tales; call it evolutionary speculation; call it, as Darwin did, "content to remain an agnostic" – whatever you call it, there seems a grain of truth in the story.