Category: Babies
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“An Essay Upon Nursing” 1748 | Primary Source Read Along
This is a read-along of William Cadogan’s letter to the governors of the Foundling Hospital in London, published in 1748. Cadogan doesn’t approve of the way women or old-timey doctors managed infant care because their approaches aren’t natural. He proposes a feeding schedule that would result in malnutrition for any infant: four feedings in twenty-four…
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White Blood: A History of Human Milk | Book Review
“White Blood: A history of human milk– How babies have been fed from antiquity to modern times and why it matters” by Lawrence Trevelyan Weaver, comes out July 30, 2021.
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Jane Austen’s Birth | Pt 1
In my Jane Austen Thinks series, I explore the Austens’ family letters, Jane’s novels, as well as contemporary fashions, scientific developments, and politics in England to get a better understanding of what life was like for growing families in the late 18th and early 19th century; and to get an idea of what Jane Austen…
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Ruth Gordon: A Mellin’s Food Baby
Have you ever seen the cult classic Harold and Maud? How about Rosemary’s Baby? Well, then you’ve seen Ruth Gordon! But what does she have to do with baby history? This article is not about the spawn of Satan but it’s arguably still pretty evil. About Ruth Gordon Ruth Gordon was born in Massachusetts in…
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“Pornographic” Diaper Commercials? c.1985
In March of 1985, Women Against Pornography, eh-hem, WAPs, awarded Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Huggies, a Plastic Pig (also known as a “zap”) for their diaper commercials because the WAPs found them provocative, even pornographic— which says a lot about the WAPs and the kind of watch list its members should be on. WAP WAP…
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Baby-Eating Witches, Surrogacy, Fertility, Baby Scoop, Old West Midwife, #moms | Rabbit Holes Ep 3
This is Rabbit Holes, a semi-regular reaction-style series about the baby-related stories I’ve found interesting and think you’ll find interesting too. Let’s get started! Table of Contents Baby Eating Witches Archaeologists in Poland have been excavating the town square of Bochnia, where in 1679, three women accused of being baby-eating witches were burnt at the…
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Cradle Board Mystery, Mother and Baby Homes, Rubella, and Bouncing Back | Rabbit Holes Ep 1
The Rabbit Holes series will be all about the baby history I find throughout the week, those tempting research rabbit holes I have to resist following. I may follow up on some of them in the future but for the time being, I’d just like to briefly share interesting finds with you. Let’s get started!…
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The Needham Ghost Baby of Cook’s Bridge
It’s not often that we hear about ghost stories with infants as the protagonists, I’ve heard a couple (the disembodied crying baby or weirdness with baby monitors), but usually, if it’s a halfling ghost, it’ll be a child. But that wasn’t the case in Needham, Massachusetts in 1839. Just past Cook’s Bridge over the Charles…
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ICBW Archives: Babywearing & Cerebral Palsy
I wrote this article for the Iowa City Babywearers group blog, published on February 18th, 2018. We decided to retire the group in March of this year and our website will be expiring in November, so I thought I would salvage a few of the most popular articles and share them with TBH readers. At…
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Stop that Carriage! | Runaway Stroller Trope
The runaway baby carriage is a classic film trope but does it really happen in real life? where did the trope get started?
The Baby Historian 