What was childbirth like 100 years ago?

[GracieNotes]

This may seem like a strange question, but I've been reading through my grandmother's letters and there is one from 1930 where she is writing to her husband (in another country), describing having their first child.
She was in a private nursing home in the UK, and writes about being made to take castor oil to hurry things along and also not being allowed to get up from the bed (before or after the birth!)
The really interesting thing is that she describes how the midwife/doctor had to deliver the baby for her in the end as she was struggling (very big baby), and she was seemingly unconscious. Does anyone know if this was normal or what would have been administered. Chloroform? I googled this and read about something called 'twilight' births, where mothers were given morphine and another drug, which took away the pain but also made them forget the details of the birth (so they were,'t unconscious but very strongly sedated). But I'm not sure this was in use in the 1930s still.
If anyone has any insights, would love to hear!

Twilight sleep is absolutely terrifying, there are probably videos on youtube about it. I think there's footage of it in The Business of Being Born.

I'm sure there was something about it in one of the very early episodes of CTM but it had largely fallen out of favour by the time those memoirs were written. It was more 1920s than 1960s.

The main thing was that the medication they give you for it is not actually anaesthesia - it's similar in a way to date rape drugs. You experience everything, including pain, but you don't form memories about it. They thought at the time that meant that it would not cause trauma. Unfortunately, it does. Trauma is not actually about the memories of the traumatic event, it's about experiencing something involving danger/harm in such a way that you are unable to process it. (Usually this is because it happens too quickly or you don't understand what is happening at the time). In fact, memory of a traumatic event is essential in helping people process that trauma and move past it. So without memory, you just have the bad effects of the trauma.

@ladygindiva that's amazing. He is on the syllabus of the GCSE History Heath & Medicine course I teach!

My gran had a variety of experiences in the 40s-50s. They lived in a very rural community and she had her oldest at home with the help of a local woman (who seems to have been a sort of unofficial midwife), with her second the same woman helped but she decided to call for the doctor when it turned out to be twins, third time she was sent to a small hospital hours away to stay for weeks before giving birth. The NHS must have been underway by that time and she said the hospital care was good.

I don't think she got pain relief with any of them except the hospital birth.

Ireland - but very similar. Births in rural areas were at home; smaller urban areas, in nursing homes. Only occasionally & in bigger cities, in hospitals.

Yes, they were sedated in various ways when either the birth was going wrong (baby or mother likely to die) or intervention was needed.

A particular horror was the use of symphysiotomy - partially cutting the fibres joining the public bones - often done in Ireland in 1950s/60s as for religious reasons sections weren't considered acceptable. There's some medical merit for the procedure when done carefully & correctly (and where a section may be inadvisable) but often they were really badly done & women were left incontinent, barely able to walk & with no one to talk to about it.

There is a book called The Midwife’s tale by Nicky Leap. It’s oral history from midwives and childbearing women in the 1940s-1970s I think. It’s really fascinating.

https://www.wob.com/en-gb/books/nicky-leap/midwife-s-tale/9781857270419?cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=18244219672&cq_con=&cq_med=pla&cq_plac=&cq_net=x&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADZzAIA74YhnLt4KNByhkMmfAopZO&gclid=CjwKCAiAq4KuBhA6EiwArMAw1LD7-UIG4Hm9kFBDSqxRP5cIgw9xfmqIbbuKf1byF91B5tgPQUwPjxoCVKIQAvD_BwE#GOR003257249

Another book you might like is Jessica Mitford "The American Way of Birth" which I think begins in the 1930s

I doubt my grandmother had any pain relief in 1930 when she died giving birth to twins. She had an undiagnosed placenta praevia. This was in rural Ireland, though in fact the birth was attended by both a doctor and a midwife - but there was nothing they could do.

My grandmother gave birth to my mother in 1939. I remember her telling me that she was crawling on the floor in agony while in labour, then they gave her chloroform, and she didn’t remember any more about it. I think she was in a nursing home for the birth.

My MIL has a 'twilight sleep' birth in the late 60s in her South American home country. She came from an upper middle class family so would have been receiving the best possible care. She said she woke up in a room on her own and had no idea if she'd had the baby or not. When they moved to the UK three years later her second birth was a natural birth and she became a great advocate for it.

In Mad Men (set in the 60s) Betty has a twilight birth, and the Queen is believed to have had 'twilight sleep' births for her first three children (there's an episode of The Crown about it). I think it was standard practice for wealthy women for a lot longer than people are assuming.

That is not a brag. It was barbaric!

Oh wow, brilliant!

It was used to spare women the worst pain of childbirth. It was widely used as an anaesthetic in a wide range of surgical procedures at the time. Of course it wasn’t barbaric.
Some doctors objected to its use in childbirth because they believed women should suffer. That was barbaric.

As opposed to all the other effective, safe forms of analgesia for childbirth that were in existence at the time?!

Chloroform anaesthesia revolutionised surgical practice, it was used for so much more than obstetrics. Simpson left a huge legacy.

@BuffaloCauliflower That’s really not a helpful comment to the millions of women who have experienced birth trauma, through no fault of their own. No amount of ‘relaxing’ and ‘breathing’ is going to help shoulder dystocia, for example.

contractions are involuntary. they just happen.
even women in a coma have been known to give birth.

dr or midwife can help an unconcious woman give birth by pressing on the abdomen.

I understand that pressing on the abdomen is extremely dangerous and also illegal these days. A woman in one of the online baby groups I was in 20 years ago had had it done to her and it left her doubly incontinent and in severe pain.

I gave birth in Belgium in 2010 and the midwife did the whole pressing on the stomach as DS was stuck. It felt like I was being crushed. Then when I gave birth again in 2012 they gave me an enema as you had to have one if you wanted a water birth.

You don’t want to know what they did in cases of severe shoulder dystocia (where the baby’s shoulders get wedged and stuck). My DM witnessed one of these and said the obstetrician was in tears. Let’s just say it’s a question of choosing who’s going to survive (shudder).

my aunt had her collar bone broken because she was stuck with shoulder dystocia. she never got full use of the arm, it's just hanging there with very limited use of the hand.

The queen's twilight birth features in an episode of The Crown.

A good resource on Twilight births https://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth/twilight-sleep/

@BreakfastAtMilliways

I know what shoulder dystocia is - that's nothing like the situation where symphysiotomy was used (when a section should have been.

Are you talking about shoulder dystocia situations now or in the past?

If shoulder dystocia is badly handled, it can result in brain damage or death to the baby, and physical damage to the mother. It's extremely serious but current practice means it can be dealt with quickly and usually safely. There isn't a question of the mother's survival - though if it's not addressed swiftly (and in the past), there was the potential for serious physical damage to the mother.

@JustJessi the fact that some babies aren’t in the right position and this can cause issues (as was the case in my first child’s birth) doesn’t negate that the uterus will just push a baby out without active pushing, if baby is in the right position

I feel in 100 years people will be pretty shocked at how barbaric childbirth was now. Especially if you look at the number of present day women who have experienced failed inductions, EMCS, 3rd/4th degree tears, hemorrhages, birth trauma, lifelong pelvic floor injuries etc.

The only dignified birth seen from a future perspective would have been an entirely painless planned c-section, or a epidural assisted natural birth without any complications.