Evolution…does it make mistakes or compromises?

[IdentityCrisisMama]

I’d like to talk about evolution. I’ve been thinking about this seeing all these little babies in my life. They’re so incredibly vulnerable and I hear our babies are born ‘earlier’ because of the shape of our pelvis…so that we can walk upright.

I’m also interested in evolution in regards to labor/delivery pain…maybe even things like morning sickness, BFing, life expectancy, child bearing years.

TAO…

[mrzmeg]

An amazing book that tackles this subject really well is Meredith Small's 'Our Babies, Ourselves'. She's an anthropology professor and a talented writer. She lays it all out wonderfully and I'd only be repeating her if I tried to go over it here

[kavamamakava]

Morning sickness is an interesting one. What is the purpose of morning sickness?

[sevenkids]

Originally Posted by kavamamakava

Morning sickness is an interesting one. What is the purpose of morning sickness?

My preceptor says this is the body's way of protecting the fetus from toxins. Only the blandest, most innocent foods are accepted, preventing her from digesting something potentially harmful.

Evolution wise, I think it's all about compromise and adaptation. (I certainly hope we don't eveolve to having openings in our abdomens to adapt to all the c-births!)

[kavamamakava]

But some people don't even get morning sickness. And some people get it so bad that they end up in the hospital.
I have some thoughts about how it's a signal to others that a woman is pregnant before she is showing and therefore needs to be taken care of and needs to slow down.
But I guess it's really just the way some people's bodies respond to the hormones. Or could it be more of a psychological thing? I know that some people have it worse when they are in a stressful or unsupportive situation. But that's not true for all.

[farmer mama]

Wow, ICM, as usual you come up with amazing topics to discuss. I second the recommendation for Our Babies, Ourselves. Yup, babies are born only partway in their gestation, hence the importance to be in close contact with practices like baby wearing, cosleeping, bf, etc., because they really are in a vulnerable state. BF- one of my favorite things I have read about bf and evolution is that the distance where a new babies eyes focus is about the same distance from the breast to the moms face. Aww. As far as morning sickness, who knows? I have heard the toxin idea. I was just thinking about this a few weeks ago as I needed to eat every 3 hours so I wouldn't get sick. Dh gallantly drove off the hwy to find a QFC, parked by some bushes (for me to throw up in) and dashed in for a protien smoothie for me. How would early pregnant hunter-gatherers be able to eat this constantly, if they did have morning sickness? I am sure they often had plenty, but I would also guess that they would have times when food was more scarce, and they would live way more active lives then we do.

On another note, I think we have really started to mess with evolution as far as eliminating the process of natural selection with medical interventions, diet adn lifestyle. Not that I don't think people should be getting med. help, but I do think it may have far reaching implications.

[USAmma]

I have heard that human babies have the biggest heads in proportion to our pelvis size of any mammal. This is thought to be in part becuase of walking upright and also in part to our larger brains. We have to birth them sooner in order to accomodate our larger brains. I have always personally believed that birth is more painful for us than most other mammals because of this. You don't see animals screaming in pain from birth and they are a lot more instinctive than most of us are.

The last part is just my personal opinion. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are.

[sugarbeth]

Originally Posted by sevenkids

Evolution wise, I think it's all about compromise and adaptation. (I certainly hope we don't eveolve to having openings in our abdomens to adapt to all the c-births!)

I've always thought it interesting...I think from Richard Dawkins is where I heard it first...that our technology becomes part of what we are. Think of birds and their nests - their "technology" is now an essential part of their being. It's not a big stretch to think that surgical birth would someday be a necessity. After all, women who absolutely need c-sections used to die in childbirth and thus remove themselves (and future children) from the gene pool - that doesn't happen as much anymore. (And I'm sure that they're glad that the technology is available!)

I'm not saying it's a pretty future, but it's interesting to think about.

[AmandaBL]

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[Yummymummy74]

Originally Posted by USAmma

I have heard that human babies have the biggest heads in proportion to our pelvis size of any mammal. This is thought to be in part becuase of walking upright and also in part to our larger brains. We have to birth them sooner in order to accomodate our larger brains. I have always personally believed that birth is more painful for us than most other mammals because of this. You don't see animals screaming in pain from birth and they are a lot more instinctive than most of us are.

The last part is just my personal opinion. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are.

In fact humans as mammals I think by large are programmed to think birth is harder and more painful, but something tells me thats not the case, I have said it before and I will say it again I think alot of the social infrastructure of birth today impedes our ability to be primal and reach the core of our birthing selves. Really there is no reason good enough I have found in my studies that indicates to me that animals should have a better go at it than we do.

My last labour I found myself instinctually alone and in the dark with complete quiet, any source of light felt blinding to me... I did not scream in any pain either, my husband told me when I birthed B I sounded like I was having an orgasm (sorry if TMI) he said the whole deal was really sensual.. I dunno I could not watch it from that end :LOL animals have not had their inner voices drowned out they are still free to be animals.. the problem is that we humans when it comes to birth are not.. well for the most, It is entirely possible to have a primal intuitive birth though, it does require re programming your mind and adapting to embrace some far out left wing (to the normal rational thinkers) ideas.

[famousmockngbrd]

Hmm. I'm interested in the whole "big brain" theory. It was my understanding that it was making the shift to walking upright that screwed up our birth process. When in the evolutionary timeline did our brains become so large that birthing a baby's head became a problem? Do other big brained animals have the same problem? What about chimps and the big apes - how long do they gestate? I thought it was about the same as us...

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by farmer mama

On another note, I think we have really started to mess with evolution as far as eliminating the process of natural selection with medical interventions, diet adn lifestyle. Not that I don't think people should be getting med. help, but I do think it may have far reaching implications.

I believe this too. I think we humans have stopped evolving. Or at least evolving for the better. Now even the most sick and weak with the most horrible diseases are able to reproduce. Not that I don't think people should recieve medical treatment or fullfil their dreams of being parents but I do think it has weakened us as a species in the long run. We are only at the beginning of this trend so it will be interesting to see where it takes us. Unfortunately I won't be around in a thousand years to see how we are doing with it.

I will get that book mentioned, I love this topic.

And Dawkins. I love that guy. I've got his books and just saw him speak a couple years back. He was really fun.

[pamamidwife]

While I've always thought that the morning sickness was to help protect the mother against toxins, I'm starting to rethink it...

The women who are typically hospitalized for severe morning sickness are often women who have sensitive systems - women who cannot take birth control pills, or have asthma, or really bad allergies. I think that the pregnancy hormones tax an already comprimised system - the flood of new hormones in large amounts is something their body cannot take.

I also think that these people are a product of our culture of farming - pesticides, hormones, genetic alterations. Not to mention environmental pollutants, increased medications and preservatives in our food.

So, there's a big part of me that believes that women way back at the dawn of time did not have morning sickness. In fact, I have to wonder if they had huge hormonal shifts like modern Western women do. I know that women in other countries (say, for instance, Guatemala) do not bleed for five to seven days like Western women do. They do not experience PMS typically. I think these issues are related to morning sickness, too.

As an aside, every woman I've seen with horrible, horrible MS is a woman that did not do well on The Pill. They often got sick from taking it or had alot of negative side effects.

[Mama2ABCD]

i think about the weak and sick reproducing all the time. it's one of my dad's favorite topics. i am a medical miracle. i have scoliosis so bad i'd already be dead if it wasn't for the surgery i had 14 years ago at the age of 24. my curves were getting more curved each year and was starting to crush my ribcage by the time i had the fusion.

had this been 100 years ago i'd be dead by now. no kids. but then, 100 years ago i would have had kids earlier (18 instead of 32), so maybe i'd have had kids but they would wind up motherless.

but i also wasn't breastfed, so maybe 100 years ago i would have been and maybe my scoliosis would not have been so severe. scoliosis is hereditary and i have 3 children now, all of whom are still breastfeeding. One of them is likely to get scoliosis, but i'm betting it won't be so severe because of the excellent early start. plus i will know what to look out for and know what makes it better or worse (running vs swimming)

but, i carry the scoliosis gene. if i had died before i had children, the gene would not be passed on. if all scoliosis women died before they passed it on would scoliosis have died out. of course, men pass it on too. mom's pass it on to sons and daughter, while dads only pass it on to daughters. my dad has scoliosis.

i also know that the pain of that surgery effected the way i viewed natural pain like labor. all my labors were unmedicated. 2 in the hospital and a sweet, sweet homebirth. but i taught myself that natural pain was bearable now matter how much it hurt. the unnatural pain of an invasive surgery prepared me for what was natural in labor and delivery.

i do feel that the way we view pain is a cultural evolution in that we teach our children that labor hurts. any tv show you watch that shows a birth makes a comedy out of how bad it hurts and give me the drugs. it might be funny but it teaches that birth is unbearable. i know too many women who are so afraid of labor pain (thought they've never experienced it) that they will get that epidural the moment they start to hurt. i think we teach woman to be afraid of the pain and we teach our children to be afraid of pain as a whole. headache? take a pill. bee sting? tylenol. not all of us do that, but a lot of parents do.

infact, this new generation of adults is called the "fragile" generation. unable to endure heat, cold, bumps, and criticism.

this is definitely a huge topic and much can be written and debated about it.

[stafl]

Pam makes a really good point. We are exposed to so much estrogen nowadays... even our drinking water contains estrogen from pesticide run-off and from everyone who takes birth control pills peeing into the sewer, which is dumped back into the river. Meat products contain estrogen naturally, and then they inject more estrogen into farm animals in the way of bovine growth hormones, estrogen is found on feed crops in the form of pesticides and herbicides, which the meat animals ingest. Our bodies store more estrogen because we have more fat cells in which to store it. Dioxins are very potent estrogenic toxins and are everywhere, in our drinking water from wood pulp/paper mills (the bleaching process creates dioxins), pesticides, herbicides, anywhere chlorine comes into contact with organic matter...
so pregnancy sends some women into hormone shock. It's no suprise, really.

I do NOT believe humans have stopped evolving. We are evolving in ways that can't be seen or measured by science, is all.

I don't buy into the notion that childbirth is more painful for humans than other animals. I realize this is partly because of my own experience(s) of childbirth. But I have indeed seen animals scream in pain during birth, when people were interfering too much. I think pain is in the perception of it. I also think expectations and fears play the biggest role in how much pain we feel.

lots of animals give birth to babies even less developed and more helpless than ours. think of kangaroos or bears, for example. Mice and dogs and cats have babies that look like fetuses at first, their eyes and ears aren't even open.

[Belle]

Hmm. I'm interested in the whole "big brain" theory. It was my understanding that it was making the shift to walking upright that screwed up our birth process. When in the evolutionary timeline did our brains become so large that birthing a baby's head became a problem? Do other big brained animals have the same problem? What about chimps and the big apes - how long do they gestate? I thought it was about the same as us...

Their gestation is about the same as us. The difference is that by the time a chimp baby is four months old it is way more advanced than a human baby. We don't catch up to them developmentally until about a year. They won't get much beyond the mental age of a five year old human.

I think morning sickness is a evolutionary work in progress. Some of us are better at handling the massive hormonal changes than others. If those of us who had really terrible m/s weren't able to survive than they wouldn't be passing on their genes to the next generation. I would be one of them. I had m/s so badly during pg by the time I called the on call OB asking for help I couldn't remember the last time I had been able to keep down food or water. I hadn't wanted to take drugs during my pg so I had avoided calling. During my prenatal visits my regular OB had told me the usual rememdies and they didn't work.

lots of animals give birth to babies even less developed and more helpless than ours. think of kangaroos or bears, for example. Mice and dogs and cats have babies that look like fetuses at first, their eyes and ears aren't even open.

Mice, cats and dogs, while underdeveloped, develop quickly. If they didn't predators would quickly take advantage of the nursing mother and eat her and/or the babies. Bears are born while thier mother is hybernating. It is very unlikely that predators will get them there. By the time they come out of hybernation they're walking around. In relation to pelvis size, a bear cub is the size of a golf ball compared to out babies. With kangaroos, they are born helpless, but because they are marsupials, they barely leave their mothers' bodies and are quite safe.
While others are born underdevloped they don't stay that way for a long time like human babies.

[PaganScribe]

Addressing the title question:

Evolution doesn't have a brain. It doesn't make mistakes or compromises -- it simply IS. The individuals who are most fit pass on their genes; those who are not, don't. The end. If people have evolved to have large heads and painful childbirth, it is because that's what worked -- that is the "fittest" in survival of the fittest.

Evolution doesn't reach a peak, or stop, or go backwards -- all of those things imply that evolution has a "direction." It doesn't. The common thought is that "well, if we were alive hundreds of years ago, I wouldn't be able to survive/have kids -- so that must mean evolution has stopped." But it doesn't mean that -- it simply means that we have different ways of making ourselves more "fit" and we are therefore evolving toward those things.

The fact of the matter is some people are more successful at passing genes on than other people are, whether it is because of availablity of health care, wealth, or just plain "good genes," and as long as that is true -- as long as not every gene is being passed on at equal rates, which would be an impossibility -- there is evolution.

[stayinghome]

Wow Pam, your post is fascinating!

This thread is interesting!

[orangebird]

I do NOT believe humans have stopped evolving. We are evolving in ways that can't be seen or measured by science, is all.

Sorry, I didn't mean we stopped evolving altogether, that is biologically impossible, but I just think that we have hindered our evolution. As you know the mutations that help us tend to carry on and the ones that aren't helpful or harmful are halted. But by helping everyone reproduce we are hindering the natural demise of certain "bad" genes. We will continue to evolve. It would be interesting to be able to go into the future and see how natural evolution deals with our technology, that's all I was saying, sorry I was unclear. But everyone who knows basics of evolutionary theory knows it happens. Not a thing in the world we can do to stop it. But we are changing it in a way like never before in that genes that once weren't able to be passed on very easily are now passed on with ease. I shouldn't have used the word "stop", I didn't mean it in that way. We are over-riding it :LOL

[Yummymummy74]

Originally Posted by stafl

But I have indeed seen animals scream in pain during birth, when people were interfering too much.

Ahhh and is this not the crux of it? can we say that the same may be applied to human birth? I totally feel that it can.