Has birthing gotten longer and harder over the decades?

[emonslemons]

Do you have any stories of mothers, aunties, grandmothers and how their births went.......I don't know how true it is but many of the women I have spoken to from the last generation say they had much quicker and easier births!
This has always fascinated me! And I wonder why their experiences seem so different......admittedly most women I talk to have been middle eastern although my own mother had a much quicker first birth than me and she's English.

Boffin My mum said BFing was given as a perfectly 'OK' option- so not discouraged (though not pushed, and it was slightly the 'new trendy middle class mum' thing) in London in the 70s - we were in London. There must have been a lot of regionality.
She did research hospitals etc' a lot though - went with a 'big name' hospital and spoke to people about their experiences. As now, being a bit clued up works wonders.

X post Shedding - the older women in my all family say similar: do try to feed from the breast ("much less fuss and bother than sterilisers") but if you struggle mix-feeding/formula (not condensed milk anymore!) hold no shame. Thankfully while that attitude has carried on no one has suggested weaning at 12lb!?! More the 'try some pureed fruit at 6 months' non controversial approach from the elders, and my mum is clearly at the library reading up knows about BLW but again interested but no pressure.

Reading on BF forums I think I'm slightly spoilt as a lot of people have female relatives who are utterly polarised leading to so much stress.

if you couldn't feed at all, you used to make formula up largely from special creamy milk and boiled water (the special milk was sold at a premium price by early milkmen) or if you were wealthier, people actually used to go to a doctor to get a prescription for something based on their babies' actual weights and state of health, hence the name 'formula', as it was individually prescribed. It's a comparatively recent thing that all babies got the same homogenised formula in a tin. I've got the old recipes for formula somewhere in my historic housekeeping stash.

My mother bf me ('68) & my brother (70s), both my aunts bf'd too. When I did antenatal with mainly American women in the late 90s none if them had been bf.

dingalong yes, my MIL was weaning her formula fed babies at 6 weeks, in Ireland in the 1960s. She started weaning DH on tinned fish apparently !

1944girl when DM had a hysterectomy in 1980, they reopened her CS incision from 16 years earlier so she wouldn't have two scars. I didn't know bikini incisions started in the early 70s, that's interesting. Of course, it would have to be a GA for a CS until epidurals became available - I'm guessing that must have been sometime during the 1980s.

My mum has a vertical scar from her emergency section with me (1979), however planned sections were apparently done with a bikini line incision.

dingaling, those 'procedures' were inhumane and appalling. An assault on the women concerned. And it's only a year or two since that poor woman died because the doctors in Ireland wouldn't do anything about her miscarriage and let her die of infection.

On a lighter note, in 1968, my MIL was told, by her GP, to give baby dh the bones from the butcher to gnaw on when he was teething, to help his teeth come through! She did, as well.

When ds was born, it was one of the 'how times have changed' things we giggled about. Bless my MIL, there was none of that bossing about that other people report, just a 'that's interesting, in my day we were told X or Y, seems mad now!'

Drama my mum had an epidural for twins in the 70s. They were pretty standard for anything they thought might need an EMC by then in the big London hospitals, and for pre-eclampsia (to bring down the pressure) although I don't think they still do that. She didn't need an EMC in the end anyway.

And it's only a year or two since that poor woman died because the doctors in Ireland wouldn't do anything about her miscarriage and let her die of infection.
In America there are actually campaigns to go back to refusing surgical management 'just in case' there's a living embryo tucked away in there, acting like suction ERPCs will cause infertility. Lots of websites with 'they told be I'd miscarried but...' in pastel colours. No mention of the usual solution (blood tests and 2 scans a week apart) which prevents incorrect surgery. Veiled suggestions consenting to the op means you want to get rid of the memory of your child.
Clearly pro-life lunatics in the background using the desperation of women to manipulate them. It's presented as if miscarriage is rarer than we think and selfish women are having medical/surgical management as some kind of termination plan. Makes me sick.

1944girl when DM had a hysterectomy in 1980, they reopened her CS incision from 16 years earlier so she wouldn't have two scars. I didn't know bikini incisions started in the early 70s, that's interesting. Of course, it would have to be a GA for a CS until epidurals became available - I'm guessing that must have been sometime during the 1980s.

A schoolfriend's neighbour had a CS with an epidural in 1971 which I think must have been quite a new thing (though epidurals had been used for pain relief in normal labour for a few years by then). We thought at the time it was totally gross to have major surgery while awake! At the time it must have been pioneering, so not sure when it became the norm.

That's probably because in the US half of the population can't afford scans before surgical management. Here that appears to be routine which means of course there will not a viable embryo tucked away that would be damage din the process. Bu then again this a country that imprisons pregnant women for ingesting the wrong things even when postmortem evidence says very clearly that this did not contribute to a stillbirth they have suffered.

I would add that the scientific education in many, perhaps most, American high schools is of a revoltingly low standard, with poor quality text books replete with out of date knowledge and superstition and hearsay, rather than evidence, which contributes to a parlous inability on the part of the average American to determine what is scientific knowledge and what is claptrap.

Back to miscarriage. If you have your cervix open for too long, septicaemia is a very real danger, which is why surgical removal can be required. Speaking as someone whose life was probably saved by the NHS doing this for her, allowing her to go on to have two more healthy children, I feel very strongly about it.

Fuck off wacko American fundamentalists. And Irish ones.

Boffin yes I had a partial molar (which has a clinically significant cancer risk and requires 3-12 months blood/urine monitoring and possibly chemo. Thankfully no chemo for me). Without surgical management the diagnosis and time it took to get "bloods to 0" would've been longer and more confused and the risk of it developing higher.

This thread is really interesting, have brought one of the books recommended so looking forward to finding out more.

Just to side track a little.....is it known what determines speed of labour.....I mean why do some women always have very long labours and some always incredibly fast labours?.....does anyone know if it is genetic......

My first labour was nothing like my mothers.....however my mother predicted how many hours it would take second time pretty accurately....she based it on her own labours!