If I don't answer any of your medieval baby-having questions, shoot me a comment below.
In the time that I will be focusing on, childbirth was the most dangerous thing that most women faced. Back then, there was no Purrell to make sure that the person who had their hands all over your baby was clean and there wasn't a spinal block to make the process feel better either. Not even an aspirin. Male doctors were not allowed to be in the birthing rooms once things got going.
Back then, they carried a strong belief that the reason for the pains of childbirth was as a result of the original sin of Eve. For them, heaven and hell were very much real places in a way that is not typically considered today. In order to go through a successful birth, you needed God's blessing.
Another thing that they lacked in the Middle Ages were pregnancy tests. As a result, women would not reveal their pregnancy until very late. Almost third trimester. One example of the reason for this secrecy is found in Queen Mary Tudor or "Bloody Mary". In 1554, Mary showed every sign of pregnancy. Her period stopped, she got nauseous in the mornings, and she gained weight. Everyone was rushing around, preparing for the birth of the new heir. She even began to show evidence of a growing stomach. This continued for 9 months until everyone realized that the baby wasn't coming because there wasn't one.
In medieval England, the entire process of giving birth was not as public as it is now. Now, you can turn on the TV and see someone having a baby on some show. Even children have seen some evidence. Then, this was not the case. In fact, the only reason that historians really have any sense of what they did in the birthing chamber is because the royal births were such public affairs.
A few weeks or sometimes a couple months before a royal birth happened, the queen would go through something called confinement. This was when she was led to her chambers after the ceremonial mass and the curtain was drawn across the door. She would not leave until the baby was born. The question was whether the two of them would leave the room dead or alive. Men were forbidden from having access to the birthing room and the ceiling, floor, and walls were covered with tapestries to make the room dark, damp, and warm. There would be one window that let in light. It was thought that too much light could do damage to the baby or strain the mother's eyes. There would be a small altar in the room so that the saints could protect her. This altar would hold relics like, for example, the finger bone of St. George kept in a bag or a vial.
The Church taught its followers about birth using two examples. Mary, the virgin mother of Christ, and Eve, mother of all mankind. However, even though the Church was extremely present during birth, they definitely had a stick up their asses about sex. If you put together all of the different rules for that time, people were not allowed to have sex during Lent, Advent, Witson Week, Easter Week, on feast days, on fasting days, Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, on their wedding night, during pregnancy, during menstruation, breastfeeding, during daylight, while naked, or in church (obviously).
One of the problems with the medical side of things was that all of your doctors in those days were clerics. That means that they were celibate men who would never father children. A lot of knowledge about birth came from a book called the Trotula, which was said to have been at least partially written by a female healer. Still, women were largely considered to be inside out men, biologically speaking.
The messy part of the birth was handled by the midwife. They also had this wonderful contraption called a birthing stool. It was like a regular stool, only instead of the seat, there was a u-shaped toilet bowl thing. The great thing about this is that it is not only more comfortable, but allows gravity to work with you, not against you the way that it is when you are lying down.
Since things were not the cleanest in the Middle Ages, the weeks after the birth were very important for both the mother and child. Usually, queens were expected to rest for about 2 months after the birth took place, but another popular choice for mothers was to go on a pilgrimage. This was a way to thank God for blessing them with a safe delivery. Henry VIII made a pilgrimage to Walsingham to give thanks for the birth of his first son, who died shortly after. You can read more about his children in my other blog post here. This was not uncommon, but it was still not easy. About one in ten births resulted in a death in those days. There are instances of stillborn babies being buried in houses instead of churchyards and they sometimes were buried with objects.
This is why the baptism of babies was so important. The baby had to be baptized quickly in case it died. Unbaptized souls do not get into heaven and nobody wanted that for their child. Original sin and all that stuff. In an emergency, the Church allowed midwives to baptize the baby, because the priests weren't allowed in the delivery room.
After King Henry VIII changed England's religion from Catholic to Protestant, all of the relics that were put on the altar in birthing rooms for comfort and fortune were collected and put in storage. The tradition of making pilgrimages was highly discouraged. Also, doctors were becoming more and more common in the delivery room, though not immediately.
Things are, thankfully, very different today. We have the technology to stop things like hemorrhaging, septicemia, and preeclampsia, also called toxemia. Although things still do occasionally go wrong, it is so much better than it once was.
It wasn't until the 1660s that a truly respectable book for midwives was written. Male doctors were allowed in the birthing rooms and things began to change. The forceps were invented and they saved the lives of many a mother and child. Also, because the male doctors did not want to squat down, and because they made it difficult to use forceps, birthing stools were done away with, and women gave birth in the less comfortable, less useful position of lying down. We still do things this way today.
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