Heh, the reason why I exaggerate the hips issue is that its perhaps most known case depicted in popular culture is Catherine's childbirth in Hemingway's 'A Farewell to Arms', fatal for both her in the baby. That's actually the only thing I remembered from this novel
and I'm probably not the only one who's affected by the
clustering illusion and thinks that even the modern medicine can't address mothers' narrow hips adequately.
That's compounded by my brother's circumstances - his second son was on expensive life support for the first month or so of his life. But the main reason for that is not the hip width but that my brother's wife is obsessed by diets (not anorexic, but close).