Here’s a bit more from Jane Sharp – ‘What must be done after the woman is delivered.’


‘... she may not use a full diet after so great loss of blood suddenly, as she grows stronger she may begin with meats of easie digestion, as Chickens, or Pullets; she may drink small wines with a little Safforn, Mae and Cloves infused, equal parts, all tied in a piece of linnen ... if the child be a boy she must lye in thirty dayes, if a girl forty daies, and remember that it is the time of her purification that her husband must abstain from her.’

Lying in meant, quite literally, that the woman lay in bed for several weeks. (As recently as the 1940s, women lay in for between 9 and 14 days). This is now known to be dangerous because clotting factors in the blood are naturally increased during pregnany. Prolonged inactivity after childbirth encourages blood clots to form in the deep veins of the legs. When the woman did eventually get out of bed and start moving around, danger was these blood clots would start travelling around the body. If they lodged in the lungs, a fatal pulmonary embolism might be the result. And then everyone would say – See, she got up too soon!

But I imagine many women would have risen from their beds, either from necessity - apart from using the pot! - or boredom, although they would probably have remained confined to their room, house or cottage. Whatever the woman’s station in life, there would be plenty of help available, either hired help, or friends and neighbours. Until quite recently, birth was a communal affair amongst the women of a village; they would help out at each other’s confinements and lyings in.

The purification Jane Sharp mentions is the churching ceremony, which I’ll write about next blog.