This article on Freebleeding is really interesting

Anal sex was practised as a form of contraceptive historically as well.

I think generally speaking, there may have been more births and babies than there are now but far fewer babies living to be children and children to be adults.

lol

In Roman times there was a herb that was supposed to be such an effective contraceptive, that it became extinct.

I think maybe religion has a lot to do with no. of kids.

And PATRIARCHY!!!!

But people did have loads of kids before the industrial revolution.

If they survived the births they had loads.

As they do generally in places where poverty, a lack of access to birth control and education etc are the case.

I am not sure how /when this herbal contraceptive & birth planning was going on. Pre-christian times I'm guessing? That is kind of a long time before where we were looking & also harder to know what went on?

Nowt to do with me!

YY, Tabard & Chris! I have a box of dried blood & bone in the shed. Hope it's not yours

One of them put on a massive growth spurt the very next day: quite impressive.

No, the poor were malnourished on the whole, and sub-fertile in consequence. There were also very high rates of perinatal infant mortality. Mouths to feed were a life-and-death issue; an extra child and the loss of some months' field work by the woman would have been very serious considerations. It's most likely that rural workers would have planned to conceive - if they wanted to - in the Spring, so the woman could work through the summer and be off when there was little work, in winter. If abstinence didn't work, they'd have resorted to herbal concoctions and long sticks to avoid unwanted births.

No way they'd have been pregnant or baby-wearing all the time. Look at the paintings.

Sure it is packed full of nutrients and things - it was going to house a baby after all! So rich and good stuff.

Go for it I say

I've fed the plants with the diluted contents of my Mooncup, Tabard: they did love it! I felt a bit odd for doing it, but hey: I wasn't using the blood for anything. The plants may as well have had the benefit

I thought it was increased money, education and access to birth control that reduced family size, rather than anything else? And birth rates reduced with industrialisation.?

Dozens of babies? That seems extreme

I thought "the poor" had lots of children before industrialisation?

What with no contraception and stuff?

Women in service, in workhouses, in prisons, in convents, and women labourers were not at liberty to just get pregnant all the time. I should think there were more of them than fecund baby-makers. You don't hear of that many super-sized families before Victoria.

Industrialisation made it possible for more of the poor to have lots of children (in England; don't know about elsewhere.) This was only because they could continue to work the machines right up until birth, then go straight back and join the baby pool. Middle-class wives at this period, too, had dozens of babies, but at least they didn't have to go straight back to a toxic environment.

Good for the crops probably.

If you're outdoors and you can wash off a bit and it's just straw and mud on the floor and stuff, I don't think a bit of menstrual blood would have caused a commotion. Any more than a bit of snot or a kid wetting itself or whatever.

There are accounts of rural women bleeding in the fields.

Isn't it also probably the case that the whole mega stink situation was for a period of time between when cities started and the victorians came along and built sewers etc (a positive amongst a host of negatives!!!).

I suspect when living in villages and stuff it was all managed pretty well. Access to rivers etc.

I reckon it was a hideous early-city thing for a couple of hundred years and then people got the hang of stuff.

I would guess that another thing to bear in mind is ' natural' child spacing etc. women were usually either pregnant or in a phase of lactational ammenorea and so didn't have the frequency of periods many if us do. When mine first came back after DD (19mo) they were quite light, for me, until she began spacing feeds out a but more at 2ish

I think you are right Dusk. Everything you read basically says that people stank at the time, bathed and changed clothes very infrequently, and rich people just used perfumes to try and cover up the stench.

For working class women living in pretty dirty conditions with mud and poo about, blood stains probably would have gone pretty unnoticed. Which is pretty gross to consider.

Mignonette no worries we both think the same on that score clearly!

Agree with Dust re. I think we have no idea just how stinky and dirty things were in ye olden days.

(Ye Olden Days = I know FA about history and so am being vague I don't even watch costume dramas FFS!)

I think this is just one example of how hard it is for us to imagine just how gross normal living environments used to be.
I think the reality is that, partly because everywhere was so dirty, and partly because of generally fewer periods, menstrual blood was simply unnoticed. Not exactly accepted. just not noticed.
With a chemise, a petticoat, and a full skirt, I don't think there would (for many) have been much on the floors. And what there was - invisible among the straw, animal shit, general rubbish.
Incredible.

One day we will look back on the noise pollution of our day and be the same. "Seriously? Was that really acceptable? And it didn't matter how much it annoyed or disturbed everyone else?"

On a personal note Freebleeding is not for me. I have v. heavy periods and muchos overflowing of mooncups and it just isn't comfortable to have a slightly soggy gusset that then goes sticky and slightly crusty if I can't change my knickers soon enough.
However, I agree that menstruation generally is a taboo subject when it shouldn't be. Parallels have been drawn with having a streaming/snotty cold for example and when you have a cold you keep your nose clean but there is no pressure to hide the fact that you have the cold. Likewise I hate the prudishness surrounding menstrual blood - it's natural and normal. It infuriates me that people get squeamish and 'icky' about talk of bleeding, reusable pads, mooncups etc.

I don't know if any one has seen but there is a thread in AIBU about period "smears" being left on a toilet seat

Oh x-posts!