Hindu astrology and the timing of birth

Question

The Skeptic's Dictionary while arguing that astrology is nothing more than a superstition brings up some interesting questions:

Astrologers emphasize the importance of the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, etc., at the time of birth. However, the birthing process isn’t instantaneous. There is no single moment that a person is born. The fact that some official somewhere writes down a time of birth is irrelevant.

1. Do they pick the moment the water breaks? The moment the first dilation occurs? When the first hair or toenail peeks through? When the last toenail or hair passes the last millimeter of the vagina? When the umbilical cord is cut? When the first breath is taken? Or does birth occur at the moment a physician or nurse looks at a clock to note the time of birth?

2. Why are the initial conditions more important than all subsequent conditions for one’s personality and traits?

3. Why is the moment of birth chosen as the significant moment rather than the moment of conception?

I'm looking for answers to some or all of the above with regard to Hindu astrology.

Answer 1

The first breathe coming out of the body is the one we must look for because breathe is a unit of time measure as per the Rishis.

The below is from Surya Siddhanth : Chapter 1 verse 12 in Phanindra Ganguly's translation.

12. And sixty nadis make a sidereal day and night....

The manuscripts without commentary insert, as the first half of v. 11, the usual definition of the length of a respiration: " the time occupied in pronouncing ten long syllables is called a respiration. '

The table of the divisions of sidereal time is then as follow: 10 long syllables (gurvaftshara) = 1 respiration (prana, period of four seconds); 6 respirations = 1 vinadi (period of twenty-four seconds); 60 vinadis = 1 nadi (period of twenty-four minutes); 60 nadis = 1 day.