‘ Midwives, men-midwives and childbirth’.pptVIP

‘Midwives, men-midwives and childbirth’ Lecture 5 Medicine, Disease and Society in Britain, 1750 - 1950 Lecture themes and outline The ‘medicalisation’ of childbirth? Traditional childbirth - Fear and ceremony Midwives - Roles, training and characteristics Midwives versus men-midwives 4. The growth of lying-in hospitals 5. Changes in the late C19 and early C20 century General practitioners, registration Diary of Isaac Archer re his wife Anne Peachey ‘My wife growing nearer her time was troubled with feares she should die; and I feared it too. She was much taken up, I saw, with such thoughts, and I was glad, because it was an occasion of seeking God,…’ His wife delivered a girl: ‘Her pains were sharpe, but short; and she bore them without sickness…and with great courage’. Thus my heart was full of joy, thinking all over; and praying God for his mercy: but about of 1 of clock my wife began to faint, through an overflow of blood, and was without sensible pulse, or colour; we gave her over, and she took leave of me…’ However, ‘God stayed the flow, and she began to revive’. Anne bore 9 children over a 13 year period, 8 of whom died in infancy. Lane, Making of the English Patient Diary of Isaac Archer: 1677 and 1682 ‘...my wife was delivered 2 months before her reckoning, and of a girle, which came wrong, and stuck so long with the head in the birth, that it was dead when fully borne, although alive at the time of travaile, and so next day ‘twas buried in Freckenham chancell, on the north side of the little boy, under a stone. My wife was in danger of miscarrying often, and was not well...especially a week before her delivery...perhaps I am not worthy of a son...The losse is the lesse because ‘twas a girle, though we could have wished the life of it’ October 1677 ‘My wife was delivered of a little girle, fatter and larger than any yet, for she had her health well and a good stomach. She was in extremity from 1 to 4 in the morning...when, after great