Childbirth is no picnic.
But at least it no longer involves chickens and weasels.
Giving
birth is hard. Or so I’ve heard. I don’t have the proper equipment, so
when my children were born my job was restricted to feeding my wife
ice chips and telling her she was a trouper. But after witnessing the
sounds and faces she made, I’m assuming birth is hard.
That said,
I’m incredibly grateful that my kids were born in the last decade.
Because childbirth in centuries past was almost incomprehensibly
harder, more painful, and more dangerous than it is in modern-day
America.
Not only that: It was also a lot stranger.
For starters, it involved far more animals than you might expect. According to the book
Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born
by Tina Cassidy, French midwives would place a chicken on the belly of
the pregnant woman. The idea was that the scratchy claws would somehow
speed up labor.
Cassidy
also writes that women in the Hopi Native American tribe were
encouraged to snack on weasels. They hoped the fetus would absorb the
weasel’s skill of digging its way out of holes. Other women were told to
eat eels to make the birth canal slippery.
Sometimes it wasn’t
just strange—it was downright brutal. (Well, more brutal than childbirth
tends to be of its own accord.) German midwives were known to flog
expectant women in a hearty attempt to scare the baby out of the womb.
And
then there was the machinery. If you want to lose some sleep, check out
the diagram of a 20th-century baby-extraction contraption that
involves forceps, ropes, and pulleys. (It can be found at
London's Wellcome Library). Or just take my word for it and get your beauty rest.
Other tools would fit right in at Christian Grey’s dungeon. As Randi Hutter Epstein describes in
Get Me Out, “a few looked like fireplace stokers, and one looked like a gigantic cast-iron corkscrew.”
Even
though they were busy squeezing human beings out of their bodies, it
was still important that women act like proper ladies and hosts. In
colonial times, women in labor were expected to provide “groaning
beers” and “groaning cakes” to their guests.
Since
they looked unseemly squatting or with their feet in the air,
Victorian women were encouraged to lie down during birth. Unfortunately,
as Epstein writes, the pose “may look ladylike but does not work very
well for the mechanics of labor”—not to mention, it can be
“excruciating.”
Now, consider the odd ritual known as “couvade,”
once practiced by several societies, including the Basques of Northern
Spain. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the father would get
into bed with his wife and simulate childbirth. That is, he pretended
to undergo labor, just like the baby’s mother. And then, the mother
would sometimes get to her feet hours after giving birth and wait on
the father.
By the way, don’t even think about asking for pain
relief. According to Genesis 3:16, agonizing childbirth was punishment
for Eve’s sin: “In pain shall you bring forth children.” And according
to Sanjay Datta’s book
Childbirth and Pain Relief: An Anesthesiologist Explains Your Options,
in 1591, a Scottish woman named Euphaine Macalyane was burned to death
for having the gall to ask her midwife for a remedy to alleviate her
labor pains.
Perhaps even worse: In traditional Siberian culture,
it was thought that labor was a convenient time to interrogate the
soon-to-be mom about any potential infidelities. She was told that the
birth would be even
more painful if she lied.
It’s
not even all ancient history. Fifty years ago, retired mining engineer
George Blonksy and his wife, Charlotte, were granted a U.S. patent for
their “
Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force,” which Jennifer Block describes in the book
Pushed.
Also known as “The Blonksy,” it was a floor-to-ceiling, cast-iron
carousel of doom. The mother-to-be would be strapped in and spun around,
generating a force seven times that of gravity to “counteract the
atmospheric pressure opposing the emergence of the child.” The doctor
stood by, ready to employ an emergency brake if necessary.
So all
in all, today’s birthing process is an improvement. Yeah, I know what
you’re thinking: “Easy for you to say, Mr. Breathing Coach.”
