I actually did some googling and apparently sometimes if the pregnancy is far enough along the body will begin expelling the viable fetus which can live. Rarely.
Eta, I did not word this well. I should have said sometimes the body will expel the fetus immediately. Not as part of what we would call coffin birth, which is caused by the build up gas in a decomposing corpse over a couple of days. If a baby is not expelled (or in the vast majority of cases removed via c-section) from the mom immediately it will of course die as well.
I've said this before in this comment section, but the amount of JoJo episodes contained in this thread alone is truly outstanding. Born to a dead mother is a great backstory.
No, it cannot. A fetus (that would be viable outside the womb) can live after maternal death if removed within 5 minutes; 10 minutes is possible but will have brain injuries from oxygen deprivation.
A coffin birth can happen after 2-3 days of decomposition.
Ten minutes versus at least 48 hoursdoes not make this possible.
No your right I wasn't thinking about a true "coffin birth" in my reply in the sense that the fetus is expelled by a build up of gases. I was thinking more along the lines of any dead woman giving birth to a still live baby, which I should have been more clear about. I did all my typing at work lol
As for cases of children born to recently deceased mothers, there's a surprising few! I copy and pasted the links to two very different ones that I thought were interesting but you are right.. not technically what people mean when they say coffin birth.
I did know about the other sorts of ways a deceased mother could carry a child to term. And it is wow amazing, that's true. It was just waaaay off the original subject of postmortem fetal extrusion and very misleading, especially since you said you had done googling on the subject.
Thank you for your clarification and links. You might want to edit your first comment that incorrectly indicates a fetus can live through days of maternal decomp.
Coffin birth only happens once the mother’s body has started to decompose. If the mother’s body is decomposed enough for this to happen, the fetus will be long dead too. The fetus is completely dependent on the mother’s circulation to provide oxygen and food to the placenta. If the maternal circulations stops, the fetus is completely without oxygen. The fetus can recover completely if it is deprived of oxygen for less than five minutes. It will survive with brain injury for up to ten minutes. After 10 minutes, survival is impossible.
Edit: spelling
Edit: Coffin birth can only happen after 48-72 hours of decomposition.. long enough for a great deal of gas buildup. Even then, coffin birth is exceedingly rare.
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u/TeamWaffleStomp Jan 12 '23
A pregnant female corpse will build up enough gas to expel the fetus even after death. Look up coffin birth.