Birthing positions in medieval times

Welcome to smnet readers - oh for a resource like smnet when I was a student midwife. Mind you, we barely had colour TV then. Anyway, I hope you find it of some use and interest, your comments and participation are always welcome.  


Lying in a bed is probably the most unnatural way of all to give birth. Up till the last few hundred years (when operative interventions became more common) birthing chairs were often used  - even now, modern equivalents are available. Birthing chairs encouraged a physiologically more normal position for the labouring woman, and also allowed her bed (often a straw mattress) to remain clean. Well, sort of clean - apart from bedbugs, fleas and of course the odd chicken dropping.

This illustration is taken from The Rosengarten (roughly translated as The Rosegarden for Pregnant Women and Midwives), written by Eucharius Rosslin, a German physician. He wrote the book in the early 1500s specifically for midwives, in an effort to improve their practice. I've used the illustration for the cover of Midwyf.


He instructs that a chair should be made so that the mother might recline in it. The chair should be padded with cloths, he says, and the mother covered. At the right time, the covering should be removed and the mother turned from one side to the other. The midwife is to sit in front of the chair and pay careful attention to how the mother is moving, controlling her legs with her hands previously coated with, for example, white lily oil, or almond oil. The midwife must encourage the mother with gentle words, exorting her to breathe deeply, and ensuring she takes nourishing food and drink, and massaging lightly just above the mother’s navel towards the hips. Last, but not least, Rosslin says, she should comfort the mother with the happy prospect of birthing a boy.

Jane Sharp's choice of a wet nurse

Jane Sharp has a lot to say about choosing a wet nurse. She says ‘... the mother’s milk is commonly best agreeing with the child; and if the mother does not Nurse her own Child, it is a question whether she will ever love it so well ... and without doubt the child will be much alienated in his affections by sucking of strange Milk, and that may be one great cause of Children’s proving so undutiful to their Parents.’

She further comments that many babies die because the nurses’ milk is bad. The choice of a wet nurse, she says, is crucial, and gives the following advice.

‘... beware you choose not a woman that is crooked, or squint-eyed, nor with a mishapen Nose, or body, or with black ill-favoured Teeth, or with stinking breath ... or the child will soon be squint-eyed by imitation ...’

Jane advocates a ‘...sanguine complexioned woman, her breasts and nipples handsome, and well proportioned ... not too tall, nor too low; not fat, but well flesht; of a ruddy, merry, cheerful, delightsome countenance. If the nurse use good Diet and Exercise, it will breed good blood, and good blood makes good milk; but let her forbear all sharp, sowr, fiery, melancholy meats, of Mustard and Onyons, or Leeks and Garlick; and let her not drink much strong drink, for that will inflame the Child, and make it cholerick: all Cheese breeds melancholy, and Fish is Flegmatick. Gross and thick air make gross blood, and heavy bodies and dull wits. Places that are near the Sea side, and Bogs, are very sickly.’

Breast feeding in the middle ages : Wet Nurses

Wet nurses were often employed in the middle ages to provide milk for babies whose mothers were unwilling or unable to breast feed. For example, wealthy and noble women often chose not to breast feed. Breast feeding is a natural contraceptive as the hormones that produce milk prevent ovulation – nature’s way of ensuring a mother can give her resources to nurture one child at a time. But noble women were expected to produce as many babies as possible to ensure a good supply of heirs.

Furthermore, breast feeding would probably cramp the style of these socially active women. I suppose the sight of the Countess of Wherever baring a breast at the King’s court to suckle a screaming child would be the medieval equivalent of breast feeding in Harrod’s today.

Wet nurses were also employed by ordinary working families, usually if the mother had died, or was for some other reason unable to produce enough milk. The alternatives to breast feeding – soaking rags in animal’s milk and squeezing them into the baby’s mouth, or tipping in milk from a horn cup – tended to result in a rather high infant mortality rate.

Wet nurses were often highly valued, especially in large wealthy households where they were usually regarded as one of the upper servants, and might stay with the family for years. Many life long bonds were formed between nurse and child.

The practice of wet nursing became less popular in the 19th century due in part to scares that diseases such as tuberculosis and syphilis could be transferred by breast milk. Better alternatives to mother’s milk slowly became available but children fed on these still had a much higher mortality rate than those who were breast fed.

The next blog will be about what Jane Sharp had to say regarding the choice of a wet nurse.

Churching : purification and celebration



Until the discovery of such things as antibiotics and blood transfusions, childbirth was highly dangerous (and still is. In developing countries the equivalent of two jumbo jet loads of passengers die each day in childbirth. Imagine the fuss if two jumbo jets crashed every day, no-one would fly).

About a month after delivery, a mother, and her friends, would go to church in thanksgiving for having come safely through the hazards of childbirth. The baby, if it survived, would be brought along too for blessing. The child might be christened then, but more likely, would have been already baptized within days or even hours after birth.  

The priest would meet the woman at the church porch and say prayers over her as she knelt, to purify her of the contaminations of childbirth. Until the ceremony, she would be considered too polluted to enter a church. Thus cleansed, she would be allowed into the church for blessings and thanksgivings. Thereafter she would be deemed fit to return into society and work, and would also be available to her husband again.

Although dangerous in terms of thrombosis and embolism, her long lying in period gave the new mother a respite from work in the fields or other heavy work, and also time off from sexual intercourse. She had time to recover from pregnancy and labour. Sore perineums could heal, a healthy blood supply restored and breast feeding established, all in peace and quiet. Well, probably not total peace, as the woman’s friends would be in and out all day, keeping her company and helping her husband with the household chores. Or, more probably, doing the chores.

Some feminists regard the de-polluting aspects of the churching ceremony as yet another instance of the church’s suspicion and condemnation of sexually active women, and there is certainly truth in this. Purification ceremonies are still common in many countries. In the UK, however, although churching may still be performed in a modified format (being more of a blessing and thanksgiving rather than a purification), church-going women in the UK nowadays rarely bother.

This is in apparent contrast to the attitudes of medieval women. Evidently, they looked forward to the churching ceremony. It was a milestone in their lives, a ‘rite of passage’; a social occasion and, above all, a great celebration of life and survival.

Midwyf

Midwyf is now available from Amazon USA on the following link:

http://www.amazon.com/Midwyf-Liza-Valerie-Levy/dp/1451581211/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1282983443&sr=1-1


If you know of others who would also like a copy, it works out much cheaper to buy 4 copies (don't you just love my optimism!) - you get the 4th one free and also you save on postage. According to my calculations, each book then works out at just over £6

The year is 1339. Liza’s midwifery skills are needed by the inhabitants of Hollingham. Knowing this keeps the lonely old woman going, together with the occasional ‘trip’ to her long dead husband and children. But she makes one mistake, and the villagers begin to suspect she is using occult spells to harm them. She tries desperately to regain their trust, but time is running short. Rosalind, rich, lonely and naïve, wants to experience true love and falls in love with a monk, by whom she conceives a child. Liza and the Lady Isabella, Rosalind’s mother, must pick up the pieces. None of the three women will ever be the same again.

LIZA is the first book in the MIDWYF series, which tells the story of midwives, women and childbirth in England from medieval to modern times. Although it's a work of fiction, the midwifery is based, as far as possible, upon fact. I have woven the story around childbirth in those times - the herbs and potions, superstitions and practices.
LIZA was published about 3 weeks ago on Amazon.
I'm now writing the next in the series, MARGERY (provisional title) which tells the story of midwifery and childbirth in Stuart England, about 1630.

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.