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

[Pruners]

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My uncle was born prematurely in the mid 1920s and he was fed Carnation milk, and thrived! My grandmother always felt guilty about his premature arrival which she thought was her fault for "reaching up" (ie raising her arms) in pregnancy.

Discover,sounds like mt MIL.Born 3 months early,weighed 2 lbs and was literally wrapped in olive oil soaked cotton wool.Undoubtedly breastfeeding saved her life.

yes! my mum wouldn't let me reach up in the later stages of pregnancy, just as her grandma hadn't let her. so women in late pregnancy weren't allowed to peg out washing for example. i wonder if there's something in it? presumably if you reach up and keep doing it your bp might go wonky and you could faint? medic... medic! anyone know?

I think the reaching up thing was a load of tosh (but admit I'm not a medic). However, anything that made a pg woman's life less strenuous & gave her more feet-up time was probably a good thing in the days before tumble driers and other labour saving devices.

mil had hideous experience and bizarrely so did her sil, both delivered live babies but babies whisked away at birth for a bit of oxygen and then not brought back til next day, as it wasn't the done thing to room in then, leaving the mothers convinced babies had died . mil went on to have major pnd, unsurprisingly really.

And yet both my mother and MIL had home births in 1961. Not entirely successful for MIL as she later had prolapsed uterus. My mother was asked by the lovely mw what position she would like to be in and chose to lie on her back as that is what she had always done before. As baby only took 3 hours to be born, I guess it would have been v quick indeed had gravity been allowed to assist.

I didn't ask my gran about childbirth, she died last year aged 99. I do know that she had a miscarriage before my mum and never had another child - I do wonder how she didn't have another child as I guess contraception wasn't great.

On thing did amaze me is how she embraced the wonders of modern technology - she enthused over the scan pictures of BabyDragon and then calmly asked me if I knew the sex

My great gran had 15 children between 1895 and 1916,but only half survived. We have cystic Fibrosis in our family and I often wonder if this might have been the cause of some of their deaths,they were about 7 when they died.
On a lighter note my paternal grandmother once told me she 'never knew what an orgasm was' until she was 40.(I never asked how she found out!)And she was fond of returning books to the library and complaining about how rude they were,then renewing them!

silentterror aged 7, that is tragic, I couldn't imagine it but am loving the sound of your gran and her rudey books
x

My Dad was a sickly baby when he was born (not quite sure what the problem was) and apparently my grandmother was told not to bother finishing the garment she was making as he'd not need it!!

Dad was 76 last birthday .

My mum (45) was also told to not raise her arms above her shoulders when she was pg with me in '82 as it would stangulate the baby
They also told her i was dead during labour and treated her as a leper as she was single

when mum had my brother in 1973, my dad was told the situation was so grave he would either have a son or a wife but not both = big brother pulled through so mum thought 'sod this, am not going through all that to cark it now' or words to that effect
she's still going strong at 69, although c/s scar runs from bikini line up to just under chest and big brother is a 6ft8 freak with family of his own

aunt remembers having her first dd in 1978 and being too frightened to go to sleep as she thought because she'd had an epidural if she lay back a big long needle would poke through her stomach

its amazing all these stories and scarey at the same time how recent some of them are

oliviaelanasmum your poor mother thats terrible - what a bunch of complete b*stards

Sounds like people were scared the placenta would be wrapped around the baby's neck.

How do they think women coped on second or third pgs with toddlers scooting around if they were banned from picking stuff up? .

that was it! the cord would strangle the baby or get kinked if you reached up to high shelves/pegged out etc. i think bending down was fine and washing the floors (or optimum foetal positioning as it's now known ) was positively encouraged.

My mother always very proudly told me she had a natural childbirth we me and two younger DBs. With DB1 she even had a crew of medical students watching as it was still unusual (in 1977) - didn't even have G&A.
BUT - the truth isn't quite so straightforward...
Now am preggy myself she has told me she was called into hosp the moment her waters broke and confined to bed. She was sat in bed/ on her back the whole time. So unsurpringly stage one took forever and she pushed for two hours during transition (as they didn't know about the slowing down period) before I actually started to move.
She had a drip to speed up her contractions and an episiotomy before transition was even over!
Talk about a cack handed way to tend to someone in labour. She's v pro the natural way and am sure if she'd know about active birth she'd have been vertical ... and I'd have been born in a third of the time.

Having said all that, I do think a lot of 'pregnancy bible' type books still gloss over labour and it's only since I read this that I've felt properly informed about the physical process your body undergoes at every stage.

this book i found v interesting w rgds to getting a feel for childbirth in times gone by.

whats really sad is that so many millions of woimen in the world still live without medical help and ignorance etc. thank goodness things have improved here eh?

my poor mil 20 years ago had a stillborn baby and was told by the midwife it was just aswell as she already had seven kids and didnt need the stress and bless my mil she stood up in her state and slapped the midwife

One of my patients was born 3 months prem in a nursing home in Ireland 50 years ago. Her mother ( lovely lady, also a patient) remembers sitting on the side of the bed, expressing for her but couldn't produce enough so all the other women in the nursing home were asked to donate milk. Her Mum, who is now very elderly attributes her daughter's excellent health to all the immunity she got from all the women in the nursing home!

You should read Birth: A history by Tina Cassidy

Explains how the medical profession has got to the stage of helping hindering too much. all about twilight sleep etc....

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oh yes, agree re odd-ness.

and re bad practices still going on.

i think its a fkin crime that maternity services are so under valued/funded, over stretched these days that there really isnt the room for bad people to be squeezed out and the good to flourish. i mean, there are good, but the system is hardly conducive to encouraging that.

This is a really fascinating thread. Unfortunately both my grandmothers died before I was old enough to ask them about childbirth.

My paternal grandmother had 4 children in 7 years, she referred to no3 as 'an accident', so not sure what that made no4, my dad . My dad is sure that she suffered from PND after her later babies.

DH's Nana had 5 children and one stillbirth during the war. She also delivered the woman next door's baby (60s/70s?) when she suddenly went into labour and couldn't move from the bathroom. Apparently she was v calm and untangled the cord from round the baby's neck and stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.

Even as late as 1978 when my mum had me (paid up member of NCT, wanted a natural birth etc) she was jabbed with pethedine without her consent - think the mw said something like 'this will bring your bp down a bit' and she was consequently v sick and confused, hallucinating at times. She then stayed in hospital for a week as that was standard practise at the time, even if no health problems. She said she was climbing the walls by the end!