Reddit reviews Obstetrics and Gynecology

No. There's plenty of other stuff that you need to know. Were there any complications with her other pregnancies that could present again? Does she have a history of losing pregnancies? Did she have any still-borns? Did she get Rhogam (which is given because if mom is Rh negative and baby gets Rh positive blood type from dad, mom can make antibodies to the baby's blood and you can have an anemic newborn). You want to know if she got any prenatal care and if there were any warning signs like placenta previa or if she was taking any medications or illicit drugs. There's a LOT of things to watch for and I don't feel like typing them all out. Sure, knowing if the mom understands what's going on with her body is a little helpful, but the main reason you're getting all that history is so that if something starts going south, you have some clues as to what might be the issue so that you can intervene early.

I kind of spat out that previous comment, so it might come across funny. In any case, I was just trying to point out that: No, even in multiparous women, labor doesn't last minutes. It usually lasts a few hours. It can go very quickly, but that isn't usually the case. According to the ACOG, the mean duration of latent labor (onset of labor to full cervical dilation) in multiparous women is 5.0 hours and active labor (full dilation to delivery of baby) is 2.5 hours. So, the only reason why I think that people can get the impression that labor is only minutes is that they would wait longer because they don't think its "real" labor.

The ACOG source I used was the textbook "Obstentrics and Gynecology", 6th ed.