Many women take the issue of labor and heredity very seriously, especially if their mother or grandmother had a particularly hard labor or complications. Is labor hereditary?

Shannon Boehmer, a media relations manager from Philadelphia, Pa., finds the question intriguing. "My mom, born in 1950, had two [breech] births in the '70s," she says. "In those days they actually let them go vaginally. Many years later my sister and I both also had [breech] babies. However, we opted to go C-section with ours. I never thought there was a connection, but am now thinking there may be."

While experts disagree on whether the difficulty or ease of labor can be passed down from generation to generation, they are certainly open to the idea of it. Dr. John AL-Jamal, an OB/GYN at Caritas Norwood Hospital in Norwood, Mass., is one of those doctors.

"After reviewing the literature, there is no evidence-based medicine suggesting that there are some patterns of labor from mothers to daughters or familial occurrence of preeclampsia," Dr. AL-Jamal says. "Having said that, there are few reports that suggest a genetic influence on labor and preeclampsia. Detection of genes related to labor might lead to better pathophysiological understanding of parturition and the possibility of detecting mothers who will have difficulties during labor."

Dr. Susan Klugman, an assistant professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women's Health in the Division of Reproductive Genetics at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., says that while it is more difficult to judge if normal labor patterns run in families, it is clear that preterm patterns can run in families.

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