(urth) Ouen and Dorcas and ??

[Jeff Wilson]

On 12/6/2010 11:25 AM, Son of Witz wrote:
>
> On Dec 6, 2010, at 1:12 AM, Jeff Wilson<jwilson at io.com>  wrote:
>
>> On 12/5/2010 9:20 PM, Jane Delawney wrote:
>>> be interested to know if anyone else has any ideas on this though.
>>
>> Dorcas' physical description upon being found at the lake does not seem to agree with her having died in the act of childbirth, and the speculation on her parity prompted by the note also suggests she has no readily visible signs like stretch marks to settle the matter. She's otherwise rather slender, so I'm skeptical she could have lived long enough to recover her non-pregnant physique and still die from childbed fever or other birth complications.
>>
>> --
>>
>
> Hmm.  I doubt Severian would know what stretch marks were.

The business about opening pregnant women (presumably post mortem) to 
take the children would give him some plausible exposure to the 
appearance of pregnancy if not post-partum presentation.

> I've also
> known women who bounce right back from childbirth to being slender,
> even without effort.

How fast is "right back?" My mother's oldest sister was a slender woman 
who gained only the birthweight + placenta of her 6lb second child. She 
took 3-4 weeks to redistribute which is very fast as that goes, but very 
long in terms of childbirth complications.

 > Crazy, I know, but I've seen it. She might also
> have been malnourished and underweight in the pregancy. I'm surprised
> everyone sees her so young. I've always thought 18-23 range suited
> her.

Same here, although her amnesia has restored a child-like innocence 
making her seem younger.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >