Is a day a day (24 hours)? We have seen rapid recovery from wounds and such. We have this re-enforced by Patchy's patchwork on nameless. How than can we assume that it takes, on this 'island' nine months to have a baby?

Maybe that is why the mother's aren't able to make it to full term, they just haven't figured it out yet. Although you would think they would have figured it out because fetal development would be much faster and could be seen via ultrasound.

Well, chellly, I think it's definitely the case that these two properties of the Island are linked in some way.

Now that I think about it though, Juliet said basically that the women die because their immune systems start to attack both the fetus and it turns on them (or something to that effect).

I know that the immune system can turn on the fetus and cause miscarriage since the fetus is considered a "foreign agent" in the body. It has to all tie together. The island causes the immune system to accelerate and so it attacks more aggressively...so much so that it kills the women too?

I don't know, I'm just rambling at this point. Gotta think this through a bit more.

I agree with Chelly. It's because of the islands healing properties that the pregnancy cannot carry to term. The island sees the foetus as a "foreign body" and rejects it as it were.

given that the sperm count is so high perhaps the actual sperm are modified / mutated in some way - making the babies different ( special ? ) .
a side effect of this is that the mother's immune system ( strengthened by the island ) treats the baby as a foriegn body .

I think the above posts are close to it. There are two possibilities to think about with your thread question though.

1. Gestation, (or pregnancy) is not the same as healing. Sawyer getting shot, locke's legs, Mikail's... whatever are not the same as "creating" life and carrying a baby. Your thread question might be answered by something as simple as gestation is not the same process as healing, and so it is not sped up.

ORRRRRRRRRRRR...

2. Your thread question answers itself because the gestation IS sped up. Atleast the part where the female body rejects the "foreign object" as an infection and attempts to destroy it. If Jin's sperm count is quadrupled, then I would imagine the same exponential growth in a female's ability to destroy foreign objects or infections. Civilization doesn't usually consider babies "infections", but in medical terms, the body does react adversly if all the factors of the pregnancy are not correct.


So the island is destroying the babies by making the women's immune systems super powerful. The fetus in never able to develop properly during the 3rd trimester, and dies in the womb, killing the mother as well.

I posted this in another thread but I think it applies here:

Would one of the mysteries of the Island be, Rapid Cell Regeneration?
This would explain how he is still alive. It would also go towards the theory that the islanders are a lot older than we think they are - Alpert - Egyptian ?
It would go to explaining a few other things, like " No one here gets cancer"
Another would be the problem with the pregnancies. One of the reasons why a mothers
body does not reject the growing fetus is because, it grows at a rate that enables the mother body to adjust to the growth. If the islanders are experiencing RCR then the fetus would grow to fast for the mothers body to adapt.
The fountain of youth - but with a price

Either Sun is not giving birth on this show, she loses the baby, or the baby comes to term sooner than should be possible.

For the sake of argument, lets say we get 30 days per season. At best we have 2 more months of pregnancy before the show is over.