Category: Birth
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The Great Chicago Baby Mix-Up
If you give birth at a hospital how well do you trust that the baby you go home with is the baby you gave birth to? Today most hospitals still rely on name tags, though with some high-tech gadgets like security cameras, bar code scanners, foot and fingerprint readers, and of course there’s DNA testing […]
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The Weirdest Cry For Help Imaginable: Vagitus Uterinus
A baby’s first cry has always been a symbol of celebration and an assurance of good health, there’s a word for it: vagitus. Some babies may take a bit longer than others to start crying after birth but what about those who can’t even wait to get out of the uterus to start crying? This […]
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Afghan Midwife Under the Taliban |Rabbit Holes
Nooria Hayar, a twenty-nine-year-old midwife at a public clinic in Ishkamish, Takhar Province, Afghanistan recently talked to BBC about the changes brought by the Taliban takeover. During their previous rule over the country, girls and women were not allowed to be educated or have jobs, or have access to healthcare– the average life expectancy for […]
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Mali’s Nonuplets | Rabbit Holes #Shorts
It’s time for Rabbit Holes Shorts! Nonuplets! Hamila Case, a twenty-six-year-old mother from Mali, gave birth in May to nine babies. She was transferred to the Casablanca Ain Borja Clinic in Morocco at 25 weeks gestation and delivered at 30 weeks with the support of a medical team headed by Dr Youseff Alaoui. Her husband […]
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What Did Jane Austen Think About Childbirth? | Pt 2.2
In part one of this series, I covered the reproductive history and childcare strategies of Jane Austen’s parents. Across the five chapters of part two, I will show that Jane’s attitudes about marriage were shaped– not by her desire to become a published author– but by her observations of motherhood, particularly the annual rounds of […]
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Death of Mary Wollstonecraft after childbirth, by William Godwin (1798) | Primary Source Read Along
After his new wife’s premature death in 1797 following the birth of her second and their first child, Mary, William Godwin wrote Memoirs of the Author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1798. Read along with me the final chapter in which he documents the ten days following the birth until her […]
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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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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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Natural Birth in the Tudor Era
What qualified as a natural birth in the 16th century? In this post, we look at what the Birth of Mankind, from 1540, had to say about a natural birth in the Tudor Era including birthing positions, recipes for potions, pessaries, vaginal incense, pain relieving lubricants, herbal baths with toxic heavy metals, as well as what kind of diet and exercise the Tudor woman should have in later pregnancy and during labor.
The Baby Historian 