In dwelling on the subject of maternal mortality. How many died in the past? Your guesses please!

[shagmundfreud]

...... how many do you think? For every 100 pregnancies.

I'm thinking in the days before

antibiotics
scans
forceps
caesarean section
blood transfusions

and at a time when rickets wasn't uncommon and where many women had experienced inadequate nutrition in childhood and adulthood.

Your guesses please.

I could imagine it being a similar proportion within deprived areas over 100 years ago but not across the country as a whole, more like 1 in 100

And from documents written by midwives in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was clear that those particular midwives had a really low mortality rate - lower than the Victorians - however there isn't a lot of data.

I also don't understand the forceps bit in the OP. I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but I have just been to the birth exhibition at the Castle Museum and they had forceps and other medical instruments from past periods. So when are we talking about here?

are you an natural birth zealot who reckons women should breathe in-out and not let the scalpel wielding dr's near them?and some cursory search of stats and guesstimates will prove medics/mw over estimate risk and potential maternal mortality

not all mums are able to bounce on a gym ball chanting an incantation sucking a trebor mint. sometimes need to listen to pesky staff

You should ask for this to be removed from AIBU - and I usually don't give a shit what's on here or not - but this is just too fucking ridiculous for words.

You say 20 odd% of births are CS and presume that it wholly to do with mothers saftey.

You also have to take into account that many CSs are done for the saftey of the baby.

Meant to add, so you OP is nonsense.

I was speaking to an African colleague who is doing a UK fellowship.

He was amazed at the publication of 'Saving Mother's Lives' the 3 yearly report into UK maternal mortality. 261 woman died in the UK 2006-8.

I'm not sure how many UK maternity units there are but anecdotally that equates to one or two deaths / unit over the 3 year study period.

In his home country his unit alone sees 2- 3 deaths/ week.

In 2011 this is a very sobering thought.

once met a quacky doula who used to be fixated on in "olden days" (an unspecified period of yore) births were safer,and we all hoodwinked by medical establishment to give up our womanly birth rites

as you can imagine,i quickly side stepped her wacky ruminations.and headed opposite direction

You have missed out maternal and baby morbidity from your question. Intervention isn't just for preventing death. It's thought that more than 2 million women in sub-saharan Africa and Asia live with untreated obstetric fistula.

Thank you breath you put it much better than me.

I believe the 1 in 10 figure to be a good guess actually . You have to remember that this was a woman's lifetime risk of dying in childbirth during medieval times not the figure per birth. As women had 8-10 children their overall risk for their lifetime would be much higher than their risk per birth.

I do heart scottishmummy

You don't need to hypothesise about perceptions of maternal mortality. You only need to google research mortality rates in countries where ante natal medicine is practically non existent to find out just how dangerous maternity used to be in this country. It used to be like it still in in those places.

Of course the risk for the baby was also very high and many c/s are done for the benefit of the baby not the mother. I think most women before the 20th century would have lost a baby at or shortly after birth. I think it's important to think about these things but not 'fun'

You are coming over a bit hearty for this subject. Or what nickelbabe said.

OP - you do rather assume that all medical interventions now are to avoid death - however in many cases now they don't think the mother or child will die, just that they would be severally injured by natural birth.

Also think your stance is rather - it's not really something to giggle about.

Csections are not just about avoiding maternal death - but the death of babies too. Loads of babies died during childbirth in the past.

They also reduce incidence of serious injury to the mother. Lots of babies now born by Csection would have been born 'naturally' in the past, but this would have left the mother with birth injuries that may mean she was disabled or in pain for the rest of her life. Birth injuries stats probably weren't recorded in the past so we have no idea of the extent of these.

FWIW my grandmother's mother died in childbirth in 1922. Her baby survived.

those stats that I quoted (that link) says that it was 2.5 in 1000 100 years ago.

obviously there are lots of reason for fluctuation over the years.

I think throughout history, though, the safest periods of time (modern medicine and hygiene notwithstanding - it's clear to anyone that today is the safest overall) were those where women, acting as midwives (or "wise women" etc) delivered babies. A big drop in survivors came when men took over and medicalised it (victorian times as someone said earlier and others throughout)
Basically, leave it to experience and everyone's as safe as possible without medical intervention
I say leave medical invervention for problems and emergencies

I think IIRC that the current rate in areas with high birth rates and low medical care, such as some of the poorer African countries, is around 19% of women die during childbirth.

In the UK, it's rather a shocking statistic that the maternal mortality rate is 1 in 1,000, and most of those are from ethnic minorities with little or no English, so probably unable to communicate clearly that there is a problem, or they are morbidly obese.

As a PP said no googling I could have recalled these figures incorrectly so am happy to be corrected.

OP so what have you learned from this thread?

After providing a guess for your sake I'd be interested in your conclusion, or are you going to keep your insights (people over-/underestimate historical maternal death rates) to yourself?