Talk:Mammalian pregnancy

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Contents

1 contraception 1.1 abstinence 2 totipotent 3 separate 'Human pregnancy' article? 3.1 Priority of articles

A complete hysterectomy? What about tubal ligation? zadcat 21:02 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

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contraception

abstinence

"women who decide to adopt abstinence as their preferred method of birth control have been known to become pregnant." -- how? Am I missing something here? -- Tarquin 23:18 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

In the same way that those who adopt condoms as their method of birth control sometimes screw up (as it were), those who adopt abstinence also occasionally go awry. Thus, while the IDEAL failure rate (that is, the rate if practiced perfectly) of abstinence is 0%, the ACTUAL failure rate is not. Someone else 23:31 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I was wondering if it referred to virgin births, or (in the words of Victoria Wood) swimming breaststroke in the same lane as a boy doing butterfly... ;-) How does one "fail" at abstinence? Surely if a couple have sex when meaning to abstain, they've not "failed", they've ceased to abstain. -- Tarquin

One fails at abstinence by... well, you clearly know <G>. The pregnant couple may have failed in their determination to abstain, or have ceased to abstain, as you will, but either way their committment to abstention has failed to protect them from pregnancy. Someone else 23:42 Sep 10, 2002 (UTC)

That's just a truism which provides no useful information. News flash! Failing to utilize a protective method does not provide protection! --Brion

I'll give it a mild rewrite tomorrow. It's perfectly true that abstaining couples slip and yield to temptation (hmmm... temptation...), but the logic of the current wording strikes me as odd. -- Tarquin

• Would something like this work? "Abstinence is largely a fail-safe method of protection. However, some who habitually rely on it as their primary protection may cease to abstain and thereby incur the risk of pregnancy." -- April

That sounds good to me. Or "Abstinence, if perfectly adhered to, would be a fail-safe method of protection. However, some who habitually rely on it as their primary protection may cease to abstain and thereby incur the risk of pregnancy." Someone else 00:10 Sep 11, 2002 (UTC)

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Just for your information, I have moved all the talk about contraception to another article. I wanted to write more about pregnancy and foetal development in detail. I have a few questions that I wonder if the experts could correct me on if I am wrong.

• Im slightly confused on ectopic pregnancies, I know they occur of the baby is positioned abnormally. Does this include the further growth of the feotus in the fallopian tube?

Jedi Dan 15:08 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

Great! but I've put back the bit about mammals - we could make a page human pregnancy for the specific stuff -- Tarquin 20:35 Apr 23, 2003 (UTC)

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too much of this article sounds like embryology rather than pregnancy. arghh.... Alex.tan 17:06, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This article appears to be destined to be the battleground of yet anothe edit war. For now, all remains quiet on the western front. -BuddhaInside

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Fairly extensive rewrite. "Post-implantation" needs work from someone who understands the details better than I do. Please fact-check the part about the red blood cells. Changed some stuff to present tense; other stuff may need to be present tense too, but I'm not sure. Audoderm?? Some sections still unwritten. Moved "Pregnancy in SF" into its own article, it's pretty off-topic.

- 12.233.149.168 02:43, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

After Googling for "audoderm" (http://www.google.com/search?q=audoderm&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) and finding only 7 links of which 5 were copies of this wiki page, I decided to change it to "endoderm" until I hit my embryology textbooks again (if I can still find them). Btw, it's interesting to note how many times this article has been copied, often without credit due. Alex.tan 08:25, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

"mammalian female" - some non-mammals bear live young too - some snakes, for example. Is it not called pregancy for them? Tualha 06:05, Nov 12, 2003 (UTC)

Why "mammalian female", because it was not known for a long time that some snakes bear their young living. It was considered that only female mammals became pregnant, by having developing child in their body, growing it. They knew some snakes kept their eggs inside their body, untill they were ready to hatch. However recent studies have shown that some snakes are actually fully livebearing, "nourishing their young with a placenta as well as a yolk sac" according to snakes. Magraggae 17:38, Aug 05, 2004 (GMT+1)

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Over in Oral contraceptive, it states "The medical community generally does not consider this to be an abortion at this early stage, as an abortion is defined as the termination of a pregnancy, beginning with the implantation of a zygote in the wall of the uterus." Pregnancy, states "Pregnancy is the process by which a mammalian female carries a live offspring from conception until it develops to the point where the offspring is capable of living outside the womb." This implies, to me, that conception is the point at which "pregnancy" begins.

I think the two articles should really be in agreement, or at least have a similar note about the differing opinions of what constitutes "pregnancy." If conception begins pregnancy, then the "morning after pill" could be considered (depending on whether the egg is fertilized) to induce an abortion, thus making it an abortifacient/contraceptive.

Edited oral contraceptive section to be congruent with definitions in abortion and pregnancy. Alex.tan 08:23, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

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Is "knocked up" really a euphemism? I think it connotes a hint of vulgarity, but if others are happy calling it a euphemism it can stay that way. Livajo 06:57, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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I think the article "Trimesters" should be merged with this topic since it is revelant to post implatation period events during pregnancy. Also I think "Fertilization" should be marked up as a seperate topic. I'n new here and I don't know how to (and don't feel like) making these major changes. Anyway, edited "Euphemisms for pregnancy", its in the family way. Also added "expecting" to list of eupheisms, and added "Pica (disorder)" as an pregnancy disorder. Also added short commentary on childbirth.

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I wonder.. Is it time to finally get a human pregnancy link going on? Tarek 20:45, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Does anyone know anything about this Chinese male artist who was supposed to get pregnant? What happened to him? Was it fake?

totipotent

"At this point, there exists a single totipotent cell which is an entire, unique, single cell human being." The usage of the word 'human being' here is curious. What sense of human being is intended (biological or spiritual)? Should it be removed or have its context clearly indicated so that it does not confuse readers?

Since this sounded rather pro-lifey and value laden, I removed that phrase.

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prior to my edit totipotent cells were "potential human life" for some extended period of time. I replaced "potential" with complete, new, unique individual, or some such descriptive terms to be applied to the organism in question. I stand by the edit as factually accurate. Let's face it, we are not talking about the origins of life here as in the primordial soup but rather the beginning of the existence of a specific organism. A new unique individual organism exists at fertilization, not before. Potential is what exists before fertilization. Gametes have potential to become an organism. An organism IS an organism. Change the previously existing "human being" to "organism" if you are so offended by a mention of specific mammilian reproduction. Do not abandon accurate descriptive terminology in response to PC pressure.

separate 'Human pregnancy' article?

I second the suggestion by Tarek and Tarquin for a specific article on human pregnancy, where most of the information can go. The article really ought to discuss aspects of pregnancy common to all mammals (or any other animal for which pregnancy applies), and have just one section at the end summarizing the specifics of pregnancy in our own species. (with a Main article: Human pregnancy header, no doubt). Phoenix-forgotten 22:41, 2005 Apr 20 (UTC)

Totally agreed. See human pregnancy. violet/riga (t) 23:12, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Priority of articles

The question we now face is which article should have the priority. The two options are:

1. The current layout of pregnancy and human pregnancy
2. Having human pregnancy at pregnancy and this article at mammalian pregnancy

Ideas? violet/riga (t) 23:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Please, let's keep human pregnancy here and mammalian pregnancy elsewhere. Wikipedia is written for humans, who at the term "pregnancy" will expect information about human pregnancy. JFW | T@lk 01:21, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hear, hear. Wikipedia is necessarily anthropocentric. We are, after all, humans. Any references to pregnancies other than human can be from this page, not the other way around. I would imagine most people searching for "pregnancy" would want to read about humans. Alex.tan 05:19, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I thought it was bad to have the Americocentric bias, but humanocentric bias? Pfft! ;) I'm leaning towards this being the human pregnancy article, but because that is itself an offshoot of the main pregnancy article I can see both sides. It's easy enough to do whichever way we decide, so perhaps it's best to leave it as it is for a few days until we have some more views expressed here. That would also mean not changing the redirects. violet/riga (t) 08:46, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What if we had "pregnancy" redirect to "human pregnancy" (just a thought), and had the generic, non-species-specific information on pregnancy at gestation? I'm actually undecided as to which page organization makes sense to me, though. Phoenix-forgotten 18:37, 2005 Apr 25 (UTC)

It now stands with pregnancy going to human pregnancy and gestation going to mammalian pregnancy. One or both of these might be better switched, but at least for now they're linked between each other. violet/riga (t) 22:32, 18 May 2005 (UTC)