Category: Video
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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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Norman Barwin: Canada’s Sperm Swapping Fertility Doctor | Rabbit Holes #Shorts
A #short Rabbit Hole! Canada’s former “baby god” was busted for using his own sperm in fertility treatments. Norman Barwin, a former fertility specialist from Ottawa, so highly lauded as to be awarded the Order of Canada, fathered over twelve children using his own sperm instead of the sperm of the parents. Parents grew suspicious…
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Hungarian Bronze Age Twins |Rabbit Holes #Shorts
Today, we’re learning about a bronze age twin pregnancy from the Vatya culture in central Hungary, which dates to 2200-1450 BCE (the early and middle Hungarian bronze age). In the Vatya culture, human remains were cremated and then interred in urns alongside simple grave goods. At urnfield cemetery, gravesite 241 stood out to researchers because…
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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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What Did Jane Austen Think About Pregnancy? | Pt 2.1
In part one of this series, I covered the reproductive history and childcare strategies of Jane Austen’s parents. In this part, 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 physiological and psychological changes involved in annual…
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“An Address to Pregnant Females” 1810 | Read Along
Check out An Address to Pregnant Women at the Wellcome Collection
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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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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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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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