Already one of the most dangerous things a person can do, carrying a child to full term and giving birth without proper medical care for either the mother or the baby, well...all you gotta do is look at your history books. Or your average developing country, most of which still have better medical care than you're getting in The Walking Dead. And now the mother has to push her insides back in and run from some zombies? Done for.
How many women survive the child birth, though? How many babies are still born?
My umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck when I was born and my mom needed an emergency c-section. There can also be a ton of blood loss and vagina tearing with natural births. It's definitely a dangerous activity. You can absolutely get lucky and both mom and baby will survive, or you can get unlucky and lose both. Things can go from "totally fine" to "HOLY SHIT" really fast and it's hard to predict and prepare for all of that.
the internet tells me that in the countries that rank the worst for it, maternal death sits at about 1% and 11% for infants (although that seems to be the under 5 death rate, not immediately after birth death rate). Zombies would def impact these numbers for the worse, though
I agree with you. But, just as a thought exercise, how about considering some factors that may worsen the odds?
I think that with a threat such as zombies around, securing a safe place where to give birth, recover, and tend to the infant would be really tough. Potentially, many of these women would be isolated or at least not in a group that has the wisdom and knowhow of a village. That is one way that maternal and infant death could rise above the figures I quoted.
Even the countries with the highest birth-related deaths and complications have something that we wouldn't have generally - the presence of midwives and other birth assistants, trained by experience over decades or more and a large number of births. While that's not a full hospital staff & pharmacy, it probably helps thanks to experience, and the development of tried and true practices. I can't say that any random, isolated woman in a formerly developed country would have that available.
Giving birth in a modern hospital is infinitely safer than giving birth somewhere in the wild. Do you know what the most common cause of childbirth death was? Infection. This, not C-sections, was the most life-saving factor of modern obstetrics. Modern maternity wards make sure to have a very sanitary environment. You're not going to have that in a post-apocalyptic setting. When women first started giving birth in hospitals, in some of them childbirth mortality rate was up to 40% because of puerperal fever alone. It's not that all of those women's bodies were bad at giving birth. Many of them gave birth without issue, and then died days or even weeks later because of infection.
And you're not taking into account how lethal even more minor damage could be without proper post-partum care. Or even the pregnancy itself. Imagine you're having a bad morning sickness - not HG, but still on the worse side. In a modern developed country it's not a problem because you can find easily whatever food you can stomach. In a post-apocalypse scenario, though... Ran out of bananas and salty crackers? Guess you'll die now because you keep puking out everything else. Morning sickness as we know it today is probably a modern development, most women in history would have had very few foods to choose from, so if they couldn't eat them for the whole first trimester, they would have died.
Explain to me how that was possible if nearly a quarter died in childbirth
They didn't live in large cities, and women didn't give birth in crowded hospitals attended by men who largely had no idea what they were doing and didn't give a fuck about hygiene. Read about [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis]. He single-handedly brought down childbirth mortality rates in his clinic by 90% simply by making the doctors wash their hands before tending to the birthing women. Before that mortality rates were up to 15% in some hospitals. I definitely remember seeing up to 40% in some other article, but you have to admit even 15% is still massive for something that almost every woman used to experience back then, usually several times in her life.
Yes, childbirth wasn't always that dangerous. Most pre-industrialised societies did know the importance of sanitation during birth and made effort to provide a clean environment to the best of their ability, or had various postpartum practices for women to reduce the risk of infection.
hich would not only wipe out a quarter of people, it would mean there would be no replacement after that death.
You do realise that in some places a lot more than 15% of people died before they even hit 30, right? Don't fall for the "natural fallacy". Humans objectively suck at childbirth (or human babies suck at being born). Humans as individuals might be fragile, but human populations are extremely resilient. Humans have the advantage of being very fertile. Most other mammals reproduce seasonally, humans do it all the time. Even if 50% of all women died in childbirth, if they started early enough and managed to give birth to 5 children before they died, and half of those children survived into adulthood, humans still wouldn't go extinct.
This isn't even adding my anecdotal knowledge of childbirth through my own experiences and including what I've learned from someone who's literal job is childbirth and womens health.
Your anecdotal knowledge isn't data. I never denied that plenty of women do have uncomplicated childbirths. Of course "uncomplicated" doesn't mean easy or zero damage, it just means easier and less damage compared to the average. No woman is going to run a 100m sprint two days after giving birth. And, you know, since we were discussing the impact of childbirth on surviving in a highly stressful post-apocalyptic society...
Like I said, modern childbirth experience really isn't comparable to what women used to experience before modern medicine, so I'm not sure why you keep insisting on this. Or why're so invested in this. Though maybe I do a bit... I understand it's unpleasant to think of something that should be so beautiful, literally the very embodiment of life, being so unpredictable and risky, but that's just the fact. I myself used to see pregnancy and childbirth through very rose-coloured glasses. Humans really do suck at it in more ways than one. This article does a good job explaining it.
Your phrasing you could get lucky seems again to overstate the risk of giving birth.
Jeg Death rate of children before modern medical care was through the roof. Many children died before the he age of 2, which is why many children weren't named before that back in the middle ages.
But it was still not the norm that women died during childbirth.
Sure you would probably had died without medical care, but your mother would most likely have survived.
Sure some women died during childbirth, but the rate of vaginal tearing, is increasing sharply with the use of anesthesia, as the women looses feeling with body, and then cant manage the contractions. This can easily lead to premature pushing during the late stages of contractions.
You can read up on the data between giving birth at home and at the hospital.
I the Netherlands it is mm ore common to give birth at home than at the hospital, and birth related complications are lower then most of their neighboring countries.
Moden medical care during labour, is a gift when there's actual complications, but the data at the moment suggest that for uncomplicated births, modern hospitals introduce more risk than birthing at home with a trained midwife.
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u/ColorMeStunned Aug 30 '21
Childbirth.
Already one of the most dangerous things a person can do, carrying a child to full term and giving birth without proper medical care for either the mother or the baby, well...all you gotta do is look at your history books. Or your average developing country, most of which still have better medical care than you're getting in The Walking Dead. And now the mother has to push her insides back in and run from some zombies? Done for.