In contrast to the Old Testament, which blamed the pain of childbirth on sin, evolutionary biologists in the late twentieth century proposed the obstetrical dilemma: the human birth process was difficult and dangerous because the baby’s encephalized head had to pass through a mother’s bipedal birth canal. This hypothesis, well accepted through the turn of the century, and even still accepted by some, contended that the change in pelvic shape when humans began to walk, and the increase in brain size of the infant, pushed the birthing process to the edge of what was possible.
It’s an edge most birthing women have experienced.
This past summer, I didn’t run the Upper Green, the Chattooga, or any of my favorite whitewater rivers, because my kayak skirt no longer fits around my pregnant belly. That’s what I say to my boating friends when they invite me on trips. But the truth is I haven’t been on rivers since before my body showed its tenant. I’ve been scared.
A writer chronicles the life and times of the African clawed frog, from the one her father purchased for her childhood terrarium, to the species’ part in the development of modern pregnancy tests, to her twin sister’s research on the frog’s role in the global chitryd pandemic.
Waiting as her mother undergoes a mysterious surgery, an essayist ponders “female trouble,” infertility, and the shifting roles mothers and daughters play in each other’s lives.
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