Jed & Katey 3: Jed! the Headship Will Have a New Constituent Soon

[JermajestyDuggar]

I look at the royal lines of birth and for hundreds of years, it seemed like twins had a pretty bad survival rate. It seemed like neither survived pretty often, and sometimes they got lucky if one survived. Of course all of that got better in the last 100 years. But before prenatal care and modern technology, it seems like twins were rather risky and often one or both died in the royal families. 

[AprilQuilt]

15 minutes ago, LancetteShing99 said:

Yeah twin pregnancies are usually induced at 38 weeks if they don't go into labour before spontanously.

In my family twins are very common and most of them if not all were vaginal deliveries. Two of my great-grandmothers succesfully gave birth to twins in the 1930s on their isolated farms somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Poland with  only a midwife being around.

On the other hand all the twins I know that I'm not related to were born via c-section. So maybe our family was just very lucky when it comes to birthing twins.

I want to tread carefully here because I believe that human bodies are not that well suited to birth, it is not 'the most natural thing in the world' for our anatomy and thank goodness we have medical interventions that save babies and mothers. So I don't want it to sound like I think all complicated births would actually be fine if we just laboured at home. But I also think that as opposed to, say, 100 years ago, medical professionals have far less experience of delivering non-standard presentations. We have a choice to safely deliver babies by c-section, or to induce before term to optimise their chances (plus all the additional technology needed to look after preemies), so of course we do it. Back when nobody had a choice, then yes twins could be delivered safely especially by someone with lots of prior experience of this kind of birth. Now it's an automatic 'hell no' which makes us vaguely assume that such a thing is always fatal, whereas really it's that it might work out OK but any level of risk is too much risk.

My first baby was known to be breech and was therefore a scheduled c-section delivery since breech is more dangerous and difficult to deliver vaginally. I was not going to argue with that. OTOH if I had been birthing back in the day the midwife or doctor attending me would have delivered loads of breech presentations and had a body of experience and tradition behind them that their modern counterparts might not share. Humans are smart and with experienced assistance maybe I could have had a serene and wonderful vaginal delivery of my breech baby.

Was I going to take the risk? Hell no.

[Coconut Flan]

7 hours ago, AussieKrissy said:

Is that Jan 20 due date a forty week date. Aren’t twins usually induced at 37 or c section at 37? I wonder if katey is hoping for a natural. Which is of course her choice. I only know of one person personally and one person on YouTube who had twins natural. So for me in my experience twins are usually a c section. 

Just a funny story because this woman is a true outlier, she was pregnant with twins and refused to be delivered early or have a planned c-section.  The smallest twin was approaching 8 pounds.  She delivered a day before or after her due date and they both were around 8.5 pounds.  The kicker?  Mom was 6'3 or 4" and an ex professsional athlete. They both turned head down during the last couple of weeks after the standard would have been to have already done a section.  She just laughed and said I told the doctor he had zero experience with my situation.  These were babies 3 and 4.  

[nvmbr02]

1 minute ago, Coconut Flan said:

Just a funny story because this woman is a true outlier, she was pregnant with twins and refused to be delivered early or have a planned c-section.  The smallest twin was approaching 8 pounds.  She delivered a day before or after her due date and they both were around 8.5 pounds.  The kicker?  Mom was 6'3 or 4" and an ex professsional athlete. They both turned head down during the last couple of weeks after the standard would have been to have already done a section.  She just laughed and said I told the doctor he had zero experience with my situation.  These were babies 3 and 4.  

My aunt had twins at around 39 weeks. They were both big babies, a little under 9 pounds though I don't remember birth weights. They were born around the same time I had my son and he was a little over 8 pounds and they were bigger than hi.  She didn't have a c-section with the twins, though thte delivered them in the operating room just in case. They were baby number 4 and 5 for her and all were big. Number 6 was the last one and over 10 pounds. She wasn't a tall woman, 5'5", but she doesn't have a small build. Her husband is a very large man, 6'7" and broad. It is crazy to think what the human body is capable of.

[Coconut Flan]

Carry on here: