I thought this was about extended gestation at first, which is something I’ve always wondered about: is the whole 9-months thing driven by the baby or the mother? Or more specifically, is 9 months the optimal amount of time for a baby to be in the womb?
Like if we manipulated the hormones / blocked the whole pressure-oxytocin feedback loop on the maternal side to just keep the mother gestating for… 12 months? 15? 3 years?? Would the ‘newborn toddler’ have a hyper-developed brain? Or just a normal brain that lost out on the first 3 years of critical life experience?
If our incubation tech was good enough to fully replace a biological mother… 20 years? …there’s a dystopian sci-fi writing prompt for ya. …or like, the key to super humans.
Or, would shit like the foramen ovale on the fetal side of things just close off anyway and put it into a birth-now-or-die situation?
Frozen embryo. Meh.
I thought this was about extended gestation at first, which is something I’ve always wondered about: is the whole 9-months thing driven by the baby or the mother? Or more specifically, is 9 months the optimal amount of time for a baby to be in the womb?
Like if we manipulated the hormones / blocked the whole pressure-oxytocin feedback loop on the maternal side to just keep the mother gestating for… 12 months? 15? 3 years?? Would the ‘newborn toddler’ have a hyper-developed brain? Or just a normal brain that lost out on the first 3 years of critical life experience?
If our incubation tech was good enough to fully replace a biological mother… 20 years? …there’s a dystopian sci-fi writing prompt for ya. …or like, the key to super humans.
Or, would shit like the foramen ovale on the fetal side of things just close off anyway and put it into a birth-now-or-die situation?