The Perfect Cross

Someone posted this article the other day regarding length of human pregnancy - why do we gestate as long as we do?

(Note: the conclusion to this otherwise interesting article - that modern childbirth is "so difficult and dangerous and requires further research" is laughably ridiculous and highly irritating.  Its actually not, modern American *obstetrical practice* is the danger.  Mamas who labor off their backs and push off their backs have far better outcomes.  There's a place to start that research!)

The common theory that the 40 weeks was actually "too short," considering how underdeveloped the human brain was relative to other primates at birth, because the female body had to be able to deliver her baby's giant head before it got to big.  Dr. Karp, in his Happiest Baby on the Block book, goes into this when he talks about how the 1st three months are really the "missing trimester," when baby needs lots of womb like conditions from mama and papa to help him adjust to life outside.

But apparently, says the Smithsonian, its not so.  The average woman's hips would only need roughly 3cm more to birth a baby with a comparatively more developed brain than other primates.  3cms aren't so much, really.

Instead, it appears that 40weeks of pregnancy/9 lunar months corresponds to the maximum amount of metabolic energy a mother is able to expend to cover both herself and her wee one.  She hits that "metabolic ceiling" around six months gestation and can sustain it until roughly nine (and then the baby's needs surpass that).

In other words,  a woman is capable of giving until she can't give a single other drop of herself for forty weeks.

A mother's road from Golgatha to Calvary is only forty weeks long.  God literally does not require more from us than we are capable of - physically and spiritually.  Thus, science can tell us what that physical limitation is and we know that with His grace, it must be spiritually possible to accomplish as well.

For mothers staring down the barrel of the last trimester - full of awkward movements, increasing aches and pains, disrupted sleep and infinite bathroom trips - this is a grace-filled thought.  If God made us to bear children in this way, than He will give us what we need mentally and emotionally to bear the trials of pregnancy even during the hardest moments.

If we but ask Him.

As late term mamas begin preparing for birth and the mothering of a new little one that awaits on the other side of the pregnancy, its a blessing and a hope to be reminded that God made us to grow and birth these babies exactly the way in which it is unfolding.

He designed us perfectly for this - He knew how much that we could do and asks only that of us, nothing more, but nothing less.