If your birth(s) happened 150 years ago,

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think I’d be alive but I don’t think my kids would be. I never went into labor. I went to 41 weeks 5 days with my first with no contractions. When I delivered (after days if pitocin) my placenta was clearly going downhill. My other two kids were also post 41 weeks, no contractions. Sadly I had a friend who delivered a green/purple baby at 43 weeks. She’d never gone into labor and her baby died. Pretty sure my babies would have died too.

Also, my 2nd and 3rd babies were shoulder dystocias. They broke the one babies clavicle to get him out. I think most midwives could have done the same back in the day though.

What kind of doctor let's someone to go 43 weeks??? How horrible for your friend

Yeah. I read that and was wondering if she sued. I’ve never heard of a doctor going past 42 weeks and not past 40 weeks of advanced maternal age.

Pp here. Believe me, she regrets it, but she had a midwife. No signs of any issues whatsoever. They did try to induce labor at 42 w 5days but the labor was several days long.

Apparently her baby had the cord around it’s neck and every time it tried to descend, the cord choked it so it didn’t descend or drop. Her baby was after my 3 and I wondered if that was my kids problem too and perhaps why my labor never started? Very scary and sad.

I read a ratemd review of a crappy OB I had, someone claimed the OB did not order BPP scans after the due date and as a result her baby was stillborn. Another crappy OB I had has a mark on his official record for blowing off an abnormal heart rhythm and killing that baby. I strongly doubt either of those dead babies are in the infant mortality statistics. Seems to be sweeped under the rug. Both OBs are still practicing, both are high risk OBs

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would but my baby might not be. But also I only had one pregnancy at 36 and 37 and if I lived 150 years ago odds are very good I would have had more pregnancies starting younger whether I wanted to or not and who knows what would have happened. Like 150 years ago rape was legal and birth control didn't exist and abortion was a back alley deal that was super dangerous and giving birth was mysterious and often deadly. So like it's pretty hard to say exactly what my reproductive experience would have been except to say that it woud have been very different and I would have had a lot less agency.

One thing I do wonder about though is what PPD was like back then and how it was even conceptualized as I had a horrible experience with PPD. But one of the things I discussed with my therapist was how it was hard sometimes to know how much of my PPD was a just inevitable hormonal imbalance and how much was living in a world and having a life that simply did not accommodate the natural hormonal swings of pregnancy and childbirth. Like it didn't make me long for a simpler time because of all the aforementioned rape and lack of reproductive agency but also there was pretty obviously a link for me between being expected to give birth and then return to work and life as though it had not happened and the mental health problems I had that first year. I wonder how that experience would have been different in an earlier time. On the one hand I would have been written off as a crazy hysterical woman but on the other hand this might have been considere a more "normal" response to childbirth. Perhaps. I don't actually know.

It's an interesting thought experiment for sure.

You would have to return to work within days. Have you ever done a load of laundry by hands? Do you know how much laundry newborns create? How about cooking everything from scratch? Cleaning? Taking care of your other kids?

I grew up in a different country, without a washing machine or disposable diapers. I remember when my brother was born, my parents were doing laundry 24/7.

Yes there was way more physical labor back then and yes women gave birth and then immediately returned to their physical labor.

However what women didn't do is go back into offices and other workplaces away from their babies and pump milk on their breaks while feeling the physical pain of missing their newborns (or go through the hormonal crash of stopping breastfeeding). They didn't return to staff meetings and talking to clients where they would be expected to behave as though they didn't just grow and give birth to a brand new human who is out in the world somewhere away from them being cared for by someone else for some reason.

The world was a physically harsher and deadlier place 150 years ago. But it was in some ways a more sensical place from a mental perspective and the idea of motherhood was a bit more integrated with the lives that women actually led.

This is an incredibly naive take. Returning to staff meetings and talking to clients while your baby is with a caregiver you selected is pretty low intensity stuff. And the part about women 150 years ago not having to “give birth to a brand new human who is out in the world somewhere away from them” completely overlooks women who had to work as wet nurses and domestics shortly after giving birth to their own children. The comment also overlooks the abuse that a good portion of women who had their babies with them in their own homes would have faced on top of everything else they had to do.

[Anonymous]

The NICU doctor told us that our 35 weeker wouldn’t be alive if the Kennedy baby hadn’t died 60 years ago. My kid was born with the same complications but benefited from the amazing transformations in NICU technology that resulted from the Kennedy family’s loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would but my baby might not be. But also I only had one pregnancy at 36 and 37 and if I lived 150 years ago odds are very good I would have had more pregnancies starting younger whether I wanted to or not and who knows what would have happened. Like 150 years ago rape was legal and birth control didn't exist and abortion was a back alley deal that was super dangerous and giving birth was mysterious and often deadly. So like it's pretty hard to say exactly what my reproductive experience would have been except to say that it woud have been very different and I would have had a lot less agency.

One thing I do wonder about though is what PPD was like back then and how it was even conceptualized as I had a horrible experience with PPD. But one of the things I discussed with my therapist was how it was hard sometimes to know how much of my PPD was a just inevitable hormonal imbalance and how much was living in a world and having a life that simply did not accommodate the natural hormonal swings of pregnancy and childbirth. Like it didn't make me long for a simpler time because of all the aforementioned rape and lack of reproductive agency but also there was pretty obviously a link for me between being expected to give birth and then return to work and life as though it had not happened and the mental health problems I had that first year. I wonder how that experience would have been different in an earlier time. On the one hand I would have been written off as a crazy hysterical woman but on the other hand this might have been considere a more "normal" response to childbirth. Perhaps. I don't actually know.

It's an interesting thought experiment for sure.

You would have to return to work within days. Have you ever done a load of laundry by hands? Do you know how much laundry newborns create? How about cooking everything from scratch? Cleaning? Taking care of your other kids?

I grew up in a different country, without a washing machine or disposable diapers. I remember when my brother was born, my parents were doing laundry 24/7.

Yes there was way more physical labor back then and yes women gave birth and then immediately returned to their physical labor.

However what women didn't do is go back into offices and other workplaces away from their babies and pump milk on their breaks while feeling the physical pain of missing their newborns (or go through the hormonal crash of stopping breastfeeding). They didn't return to staff meetings and talking to clients where they would be expected to behave as though they didn't just grow and give birth to a brand new human who is out in the world somewhere away from them being cared for by someone else for some reason.

The world was a physically harsher and deadlier place 150 years ago. But it was in some ways a more sensical place from a mental perspective and the idea of motherhood was a bit more integrated with the lives that women actually led.

This is an incredibly naive take. Returning to staff meetings and talking to clients while your baby is with a caregiver you selected is pretty low intensity stuff. And the part about women 150 years ago not having to “give birth to a brand new human who is out in the world somewhere away from them” completely overlooks women who had to work as wet nurses and domestics shortly after giving birth to their own children. The comment also overlooks the abuse that a good portion of women who had their babies with them in their own homes would have faced on top of everything else they had to do.

I don't think you understand that no one is making the argument that women have it harder now. Obviously it's better to give birth in 2024 than in 1874.

But we do have high rates of PPD and PPA in the US and it's reasonable to ask why. You blow off returning to work in an environment where you are expected to behave as though you did not just give birth as "low intensity stuff" betraying the obvious fact that you didn't have PPD or PPA or even worse post-partum psychosis. It is not "low intensity" for some women. It can be fatal.

Also obviously people are aware that low (and no) wage women have been forced back into the workplace forever and that many women face abuse at home. That is horrible. It dies not mean that women who suffer from PPD need to shut up and sit down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Would you be alive?

My birth? No. My mom had a cesarean and I swallowed meconium and required antibiotics.

My sons birth. Yes. It went smoothly without any interventions.

[Anonymous]

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would but my baby might not be. But also I only had one pregnancy at 36 and 37 and if I lived 150 years ago odds are very good I would have had more pregnancies starting younger whether I wanted to or not and who knows what would have happened. Like 150 years ago rape was legal and birth control didn't exist and abortion was a back alley deal that was super dangerous and giving birth was mysterious and often deadly. So like it's pretty hard to say exactly what my reproductive experience would have been except to say that it woud have been very different and I would have had a lot less agency.

One thing I do wonder about though is what PPD was like back then and how it was even conceptualized as I had a horrible experience with PPD. But one of the things I discussed with my therapist was how it was hard sometimes to know how much of my PPD was a just inevitable hormonal imbalance and how much was living in a world and having a life that simply did not accommodate the natural hormonal swings of pregnancy and childbirth. Like it didn't make me long for a simpler time because of all the aforementioned rape and lack of reproductive agency but also there was pretty obviously a link for me between being expected to give birth and then return to work and life as though it had not happened and the mental health problems I had that first year. I wonder how that experience would have been different in an earlier time. On the one hand I would have been written off as a crazy hysterical woman but on the other hand this might have been considere a more "normal" response to childbirth. Perhaps. I don't actually know.

It's an interesting thought experiment for sure.

You would have to return to work within days. Have you ever done a load of laundry by hands? Do you know how much laundry newborns create? How about cooking everything from scratch? Cleaning? Taking care of your other kids?

I grew up in a different country, without a washing machine or disposable diapers. I remember when my brother was born, my parents were doing laundry 24/7.

Yes there was way more physical labor back then and yes women gave birth and then immediately returned to their physical labor.

However what women didn't do is go back into offices and other workplaces away from their babies and pump milk on their breaks while feeling the physical pain of missing their newborns (or go through the hormonal crash of stopping breastfeeding). They didn't return to staff meetings and talking to clients where they would be expected to behave as though they didn't just grow and give birth to a brand new human who is out in the world somewhere away from them being cared for by someone else for some reason.

The world was a physically harsher and deadlier place 150 years ago. But it was in some ways a more sensical place from a mental perspective and the idea of motherhood was a bit more integrated with the lives that women actually led.

When my grandmother was born, the birth trauma was so intense that she was totally unable to care for her. Her grandmother took my grandmother to her house to care from her and my grandmother did not see her own mother until she was nearly a year old—her mother was basically bed ridden. She was fed rice water and then goats milk to survive.

And there were lots and lots of women that did go back to work immediately, leaving their babies with relatives or abandoning them at orphanages (that housed mostly abandoned babies not actually orphans). I think your view of history is way too rosy.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t be here. I was born in the late ‘60s. Not a preemie but very low birth weight, low blood sugar and a bunch of other stuff I don’t think they ever got a handle on. I was in the hospital for a month after I was born.

100 year’s before that, there would have been no hospital, no incubator and possibly no doctor. 55 years ago my sense is it was very precarious too.

[Anonymous]

With my first, maybe. I didn’t go into labor after my water broke and had to have pitocin, so infection may have been an issue back then.

With my second, yes. Quick, easy birth.

With my third, likely not. He got stuck and I almost needed a c-section, then I hemorrhaged. Fun times.

Also, I’m Rh- with 3 + kids, they might not have survived either.

[Anonymous]

I had an abruption so neither of us would have survived

[Anonymous]

Yes. I had four uncomplicated vaginal deliveries.

[Anonymous]

Nope, I had two c-sections because my babies were breech. One child had the cord wrapped around her neck three times, so she would not have made it.

[Anonymous]

Not a chance.

[Anonymous]

Not likely.

[Anonymous]

Was someone with forceps around?