Pregnancy is tough on the body and as all the women who have carried to term, those last few weeks are grueling, brutal, and cruel. Walking is a challenge, breathing and eating and seemingly everything becomes uncomfortable or unmanageable. Turns out it’s all part of your body reaching it’s absolute limit in the gestation process.
The University of Rhode Island just completed a study that suggests human gestation period is not due to hip width and head size (a long held theory), it’s actually due to the female body’s metabolic rate. That’s right, our bodies reach of point, the edge of the cliff so to say, where we can no longer go on and the babies must be evicted. Keep reading for a complete rundown of the study…
Up until this study came out the theory that human gestation (pregnancy) was limited to nine months was due to the fact the human babies have large heads and if they grew any bigger inside a woman’s body, we would not be able to push those huge heads out of our pelvis and through the birth canal. Why haven’t our hips evolved to accommodate this? It was thought that wider hips would interfere with walking. Not true and hip width doesn’t play a role in gestation length. It’s all about the female body not being able to put any more energy into growing their baby. There’s a limit to the number of calories a woman can burn and energy spent on gestation so once we reach the danger zone, our bodies know what to do…go into labor.
For the full scientific rundown on this fascinating study and new findings click here.
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