I asked my grandmother what she had known about birth before having a baby and she said....

[Pruners]

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I had my stitches done without anaesthetic.
didn't hurt after what had just happened lol.
that said, the day after it might have been a bit more painful- less adrenaline etc

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My Father remembers men knocking their door in the middle of the night to fetch my Gran to help their wives give birth. She would get there faster than the official midwife but had absolutely no training or qualifications - just experience and a strong constitution. He doesn't know in what capacity she helped - they would never have discussed that.
She was also called to lay out the dead in the village too.

I went to visit my elderly neighbour (83) in hospital yesterday and she said

'of course the problem with my marriage was that it was never consummated. And of course I'd had an affair before marriage so I knew what i was missing out on and it caused many problems'.

At which stage I choked then smiled sweetly, shuffled my feet and tried to think how to talk to an 80 odd year old about sex

My grandmother had 8 children including 2 who were stillborn. Her firstborn was stillborn. She never mentioned it.

my great great grandma was the village midwife in rural ireland and when they moved over to glasgow she was employed (as a very elderly woman) by the young GP. he didn't speak Gaelic, you see, so they needed someone capable of translation but he was clever enough to realise she was a capable midwife. lots and lots of babies called after her in the east end of glasgow...

at some of the stories here

I was amazed to discover that a woman at one of my ante-natal classes didn't come to any more sessions as she was so shocked at what she saw when they played a childbirth video to us. I found it incomprehensible that she had got to that stage without realising what it was going to be like... I wonder if maybe she just didn't want to have to deal with it until it happened?

yurt fabulous

having said all this i gave birth in 1992 with no idea what to expect
i knew the basics of course but not about levels of pain - stages of labour etc

don't think it's that uncommon that the older generations didn't know that much.
My mum was the 2. oldest that lived with my nan ( oldest daughter lived with grandparents, as nan and grandad fled to germany in the war and little boy that was born in that time, died shortly after Birth)...
my nan went on to have many children, and all homebirth bar the youngest, and my mum had no real clue, thought preganany happens when kissing and so on....

Must admit, I am surprised considering the large amount of Homebirths my nan had...but I suppose in them days things weren't really talked about.
On the other hand there was obviously the case of many very medicated Hospital Births, where women were completely knocked out, etc...so, women possibly wouldn't really know what happened...

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My Mum, in the 1960's, grabbed the midwife's hand in labour and was told "now then, we don't want any of that nonsense".

1950,
she and you must be young?

I never asked my Nan

My mum (81) is the 2nd of 5 and said they weer never aware when their mum, my gran, was pregnant
The first they knew was when they heard a baby scream, and would look at eachother and say, "not another one.."
My dad (would have been 86 now) always said 'the first (baby) is due to ignorance, the rest are all mistakes' referring to me and my sisters!

They both found the concept of planning a family and trying deliberately to get pregnant very odd.

Oh and at that time, and people didn't use the word 'pregnant'. Women were always 'expecting'

My late maternal grandmother (who died before I was born) had at least one (my mum thinks probably 2) stillbirth.

We managed to trace the little girl who would have been my aunt, and went to the graveyard but there was no proper stone or anything like that. I found it fascinating, and both my mum and I had a strong urge to get as much information as possible. My mum thinks she probably had a brother as well, perhaps a late m/c or even a stillbirth as in those days (late 1940s) I don't think that they were always registered or acknowledged. My mum is officially an only child so looking for info on what would have been her brother and sister was quite important.

Sorry to op just realised a bit off subject, but got thinking after reading some of the other very moving posts.

Both my gran's have passed away, wish i'd had chance to ask them . I am shocked and saddened by some of these stories and amazed by others. To second Danae, does anyone know of any books about this sort of thing? stories? history of? etc

"what I find fascinating is that at some point these women WANT to talk about it" - absolutely. Someone once suggested to me that perhaps we never totally process our birth experiences, as whenever the subject is raised it can be talked about in great detail, and over and over again with the same clarity, regardless of how much time has passed since the experience.

lol at "expecting". I love using that word. I found it very difficult to use the word pregnant during the early days (and I've no idea why), so much so that when I told my work I said "I'll be taking maternity leave soon" rather than "I'm pregnant".

Sorry to be off topic

Onepiece - I think not so long ago, still-born babies were put in an adult coffin so they 'had someone to look after them' (but of course, this was probably not told to the other bereaved family). it's relatively recently that deceased babies were given their own graves. I suppose the question of registering babies depends how far along the still-birth occurred.

Tatties, but then, in other cultures, or in our past societies, women would have a large flock of other women/girls around them, whislt giving Birth, and therefore women were much more realistic of Birth and knew more about it...even now, Birth is a bit hushed up really....I mean, teh real trueth of actually ebing at a Birth (unless your own, or being a proffessional....)

Dairy,Sheila Kitzinger has written some wonderful Books about Birth in general, and some go into a great deal of History and Traditions of Birth, cultures and in the different ages...I personally found the Book "rediscovering Birth" very intersting!

I love home confinement meaning homebirth and also on offical maternity forms it was official date of confinement = due date.

Who is getting confined exactly?

yeah, teh term Home confinement really through me, when I asked about Homebirth with ms...am not english, and had heard of Homebirht, but never really got to grips with the confinement thing, lol....

Women used to be literally confined - to the house! in case someeone saw their pregnancy. in the middle ages aristocratic women were locked in a room about a month before the birth til about 6 weeks after with fires burning to ward off evil fumes etc even in the middle of summer. presumbaly the plebs just had to get on with it....!