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Childbirth

Share experiences and get support around labour, birth and recovery.

Original poster

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

188 replies

Pruners · 15/02/2008 08:46

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PaulaYatesBiggestFan · 15/02/2008 23:01

oooh sounds appealing

ViolentFemme · 15/02/2008 23:02

Good Lord really? Evil fumes??

PaulaYatesBiggestFan · 15/02/2008 23:03

nestling in a cosy room for a few months

bookwormmum · 15/02/2008 23:05

Fresh air mostly - they thought it was harmful to babies. Off-topic but the Tudors thought eating fresh fruit was harmful. so they stewed it and ate it with sugar.

3andnomore · 15/02/2008 23:07

Paula, in the past and in other cultures still, it is not unusual that mothers are confined, but in a positive way...i.e. other women in the community will take care of household etc...whilst mum rests and concentrates on feeding the Baby...
but I doubt many women now would see it as a benefit, considering the very bad commments I have received in the past about my mum coming to stay for the first 5 weeks of es life...well, she came a week before duedate, as that made sure she would meet ds....I loved it and experienced it as beneficial, but I know many other women who would conceive it as their worst nightmare, lol

3andnomore · 15/02/2008 23:08

bookworm, tudors weren't very clever, eh...

sweetkitty · 15/02/2008 23:12

Oh am coming around to being confined, to bed with feeding newborn, with TV, snacks and phone leaving DP to attend to other DC and household chores

Dalrymps · 15/02/2008 23:12

thanks 3andnomore, will have a look at that one

bookwormmum · 15/02/2008 23:13

In some respects they were probably more educated than many people today, with the pool of knowledge available in Europe at the time. Evidently nutrition needed some more research .

Another baby-care technique they used was to strap babies to boards from new-born to make their spines grow straight. Possibly for easier porterage of said infant too....

edam · 15/02/2008 23:19

My godmother's twin sister had her first baby during WW2. Sadly he was still-born. The hospital told her to get a box to put 'it' in. The poor girl had to carry her baby's body home from hospital on the sodding tram.

Dalrymps · 15/02/2008 23:20

strap babies to boards

ViolentFemme · 15/02/2008 23:21

Oh edam

edam · 15/02/2008 23:24

Unlike many of the women in the stories here, she did know where babies came from, though. My godmother's mother was an advocate of women's rights and tramped all round Manchester trying to garner support to set up a family planning clinic. My godmother remembers being spat at, people were so disgusted at the idea.

Godmother also told me it was amazing when the NHS was launched, suddenly thousands of women turned up with prolapsed wombs - they'd just been keeping going all those years and then suddenly could get help. Before free healthcare, you could only justify the money for a doctor if it was life or death or to keep the man of the house fit for work.

ViolentFemme · 15/02/2008 23:26

This thread has really put a few things into perspective for me.

edam · 15/02/2008 23:26

I know, Violent, so sad. She did go on to have other children after the war when her husband came home, though, and lived to a very ripe old age. Her twin sister, my Godmother, is still going strong, touch wood.

AitchTwoOh · 15/02/2008 23:26

jesus, edam.

edam · 15/02/2008 23:28

There is something to be said for having a godmother old enough to be my Granny, I learn so much from her, all the time.

hertsnessex · 15/02/2008 23:29

what a wonderful thread, so interesting. i wish i had grandparents alive. i may ask my dh's nan when we next see her.

cx

3andnomore · 15/02/2008 23:29

prolapsed womb...now there is something I do NOT want to ever experience...

Danae · 15/02/2008 23:29

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edam · 15/02/2008 23:31

Oh, forgot the most poignant thing about the tram story - she was actually comparatively lucky. Because unlike a lot of other people, she had a Dad who actually visited her in hospital. He was the one who found a box and he was there on the journey back home with her baby. God knows what she would have done without him.

onepieceoflollipop · 15/02/2008 23:32

Just got a book out of the library yesterday (want to start reading it now but too knackered as dd2 gets up in the night!)

"Call the Midwife" by Jennifer Worth. "a true story of the East End in the 1950s" The author was only 22 when she became a midwife.

3andnomore · 15/02/2008 23:32

It's weird really, because my nan talked, otherwise, about everything, the rapes of women she experienced when they fled selicia, the war in general, my aunts little mentally disabled daughter that was put in a home by my aunts nasty husband, the families mental illnesses..everything...but she never said much about Birth, otehr then that the youngest of her children was born in Hospital because she bled so much!
It was my mum who felt it was very important to prepare me better...and whilst she didn't go into detail, one thing stuck into her mind, that you feel lots of pressure and possibly feel the Baby comes out like a poo, lol...but it did help me, because that is very much the pressure that I felt...on mny bowels...

edam · 15/02/2008 23:35

Good for your Granny, Danae!

My great-granny was told it would be better to leave her youngest to die. And, when he didn't, to 'put him away' and forget all about him.

ViolentFemme · 15/02/2008 23:35

We really don't know we're born )and I really do pardon that pun).

Danae, I love your granny for investing time and effort in the runt and I love that she had a shotgun. Go Granny!