A century ago, almost every Australian woman knew someone who had died during childbirth.
Thus, when women fell pregnant, they were well aware of the risk. Some were, rightfully, terrified.
Once understood to be a natural life event, giving birth was now (at least to city women) thought to be an injury or crisis. And sometimes, for the first time in history, childbirth required medical intervention.
‘Experts’ like John D. West wrote extensively about motherhood, and said a woman knows she’s pregnant when she experiences a “depraved appetite”.
“The woman eats enormously, for her, and still is always hungry,” he explained. “This craving will sometimes compel her to get up at midnight and eat… if she refuses to satisfy this craving for particular kinds of food, the thought of it will haunt her day and night.”
LISTEN: Midwife Cath shares on Mamamia’s pregnancy podcast, Hello Bump, how you know if you’re going to have an easy birth. Post continues below.
As an aside, I am not pregnant, but West has managed to summarise my life in two sentences.
Furthermore, it was said that succumbing to such cravings would result in your child having an ugly birthmark. Jesus.
In the early 20th century, 90 per cent of doctors had no formal qualifications. They’d been trained on the job. With that said, there were a number of developments during the late 19th century regarding sanitation and infection, which would save countless lives.
Most women still gave birth at home, but for those who went to a hospital while in labour, the first thing a nurse or doctor would do was cleanse the abdomen, thighs and external genitals.
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Unfortunately, some of this still happens in some developing countries. A close friend gave birth in 2011 in a developing country in a room full of other women also in labour only to have to have the midwife ask her "Did you scream like this when you were making the baby? And then abuse her for not being able to get the baby to latch.
Something that's also not remembered these days is that when women gave birth in hospitals, the environment was absolutely filthy. Ideas regarding sterile procedure and universal precautions were not yet in full force, and neither did doctors and nurses wash their hands terribly much.
When women moved to having their babies in hospitals, lured here by the understandably seductive notion of proper pain relief, the rates of women and babies dying in labour or just afterwards increased 400%. Doctors and nurses would go from desperately sick people, dying people, straight to mothers and babies. Who then died in droves. That all of course improved rapidly upon the introduction and use of handwashing and anti-biotics, but that is one of the reasons why the medical establishment is truthfully able to say that they reduced the rate of maternal and neonatal death by such huge numbers. They kind of skate over the fact that they killed women and babies in the millions when they first came to hospital though.
Exactly.. this article only mentions hospital births and completely misses talking about the millions of successful home births that were common among the lower classes back then, especially in the U.K. These women were lovingly attended by competent midwives and had much lower rates of surgical interference, infection and death than the women who went to hospital. It's great to see the emphasis on midwives that exists in hospitals today, particularly in the U.K. and Australia