It was a normal thing for a fairly well off lady to engage a Monthly Nurse to stay with the family. She would usually move in before the baby was due and assist with the delivery and then look after the mother and baby for a month, sometimes longer if the family required and she didn't have another position to move on too. Remember in the 'old days' mothers had what was called a lying in period before and after giving birth. Afterwards could be anything from 9 days to 2 months. When I had my first child 1967 mums were expected to rest in bed most of the day for the first 10 days and if baby was born at home the midwife came every day for 10 days and woe betide you being out of bed when she arrived!
Daphne
Looking for Northey, Goodfellow, Jobes, Heal, Lilburn, Curry, Gay, Carpenter, Johns, Harris, Vigus from Cornwall, Somerset, Durham, Northumberland, Cumberland, USA, Australia.
The enforced bed rest led to an increased death rate among young mothers, hence the modern drive to get you up and about.
My rellies were more likely to be monthly nurses, rather than use their services. Thank goodness for Ancestry, otherwise I would never have found some of them.
Phoenix - with charred feathers Researching Skillings from Norfolk, Sworn from Salisbury and Adams in Malborough, Devon.
It took centuries for them to notice that country women, who got up almost immediately after childbirth because they had to, had much lower rates of perinatal mortality than the more genteel ladies in the towns.
When they DID notice, they decided it was because the lower orders were more like the animals, and more designed for breeding than refined ladies!
Yes. It also took ages before a doctor cottened on to the idea that puerpural fever was caused by infection - and even longer after that before it became standard practice for attendants to wash their hands before dealing with new mothers.
After all, its only relatively recently that they realised that blood-letting didn't do any good at all.
Country midwives back in the 17th,18th and 19th centuries, often kept their iknives in a barrel of salt, which must have gone a long way towards combatting infection. They also knew the value of boiling the string to tie the cord.
Yes, its quite scary the way childbirth (a natural procedure) has become so medicalised - after all hospitals are a great source of infection and being in a strange environment is much less comforting than being in your own home.
I always regretted that I had my babies in hospital, though as the elder one needed treatment for jaundice we'd have ended up there with him anyway.
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