So, Season 3 of The Walking Dead went up on Netflix today

First of all, the minute I turned the show on, my Valenbaby hopped up to the TV and started thwacking a zombie with her foot. Nice work, Val! Add my cat to the list of creatures who would be more interesting and effective protagonists than Douchebag Prime.

This post is about Lori's labor. Or "labor," as the case may be is here.

How childbirth works is not, or shouldn't be, a mystery to anyone over the age of 12. Women love The Walking Dead (Helloooo, Daryl Musclyarms Dixon!), and a good chunk of that audience group have had babies of their own. A good chunk of fathers watching the show were there for the birth of their children. And most of the rest is common sense. I mean, maybe with the slow, painful death of comprehensive sex ed in schools, "how childbirth works" isn't common knowledge, after all.

But if you're writing a damn script for a major TV series where a woman gives birth, you damn well better get the details right.

For one, extreme stress and running around and whatnot do not actually induce labor. I'm willing to give them a pass on that one, since they're trying (ahem) to make an exciting show, and having Lori go into labor right then causes Dramatic Tension. Ok, dudes.

Two, labor takes a long time. Whole days could pass between your first contraction and the actual birth. Yes, sometimes a woman realizes she's in labor and pops out a baby two seconds later, but those are exceptions that prove the rule. And given that Lori delivered Carl by C-section, it's unlikely that that would be typical for her. After one contraction, no woman would get down on the floor and assume a baby's about to come out.

Third, women who have C-sections can still deliver babies vaginally. Hospitals just usually recommend against it, because there's a slightly higher risk of complications, and they make more money off of an expensive surgical procedure. Not to minimize the actual risks and dangers of reality childbirth,  but women have obviously been poppin' out babies outside of hospitals for most of human history. The fact that Lori had had a C-section previously isn't a cause for panic until something in her current delivery actually goes wrong.

Fourth, a little bit of blood during childbirth is normal. That's all the placenta is, is a big ol' sack o' blood, and it's coming out with the baby. Maggie, presumably, has seen cattle or other farm critters give birth before, so she should expect the baby not to pop out clean. I understand that the sight of blood would cause someone to panic in that situation, but it's silly to infer from some bloody fingertips that Lori's hemorraghing or whatever, even though that's clearly what the writers want us to assume. Sigh.

Fifth- FIFTH!- Lori was trying to push even though she wasn't even dilated yet. Maggie says so. Girl, ain't no baby comin' out until that vaginal canal opens up! Common sense. No wonder it fucking hurts to push. The baby has nowhere to go. Stupid.

And last but not least, how long were they even in that closet? Maybe thirty minutes? An hour? The flow of time is difficult to judge on this show because everything is as slow as shit. Regardless, an hour of contractions where real labor hasn't even started yet isn't enough to judge whether you have to cut someone open and rip a baby out of their still-living body. Overkill, much? The right thing to do would be to calm Lori down, make her take some deep breaths, and have Maggie and Carl work together to fight their way back to the group. Sure, she could have died in childbirth later anyway, but "Welp, it's been an hour! Cut me open with my son's zombie-killin' knife!" is total nonsense. If they wanted to go that route, they should have created a situation where the group was separated for a day or longer.

The group should be furious with Maggie for killing Lori for no reason whatsoever, but... they're not.

In any case, what's done is done, and now the stage is set for Douchebag Prime to become newly obsessed with his wife, even though he treated her like garbage while she was alive. Wheeeeeee!!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that this is how they handle the birth, given the fiasco that was the episode where Lori tries to give herself an abortion by overdosing on emergency contraception. Hugh Jackman's watching for the first time too, and he sent me a text while I was writing this that's just like, "And also she has to hold her belly when she's walking, because apparently babies can just fall out at any moment."

LADYPARTS: HOW DO THEY WORK?

Also: I'm glad that after two seasons of being called "T-Dog" and not getting any lines, T-Dog finally got to sacrifice himself to save a white lady. I'm sure it's what he always wanted. That, and a real name.