Historically, midwifery was not really a specialized training thing. You would apprentice informally just by hanging out at births or traveling with the local midwife (see this book for a fascinating account of midwifery in rural New England in the late 1700s) so I'd argue that learning it would be no more difficult than the typical systems of informal labor-bartering that take place in rural or preindustrial societies. That same book about Martha Ballard that I linked is also fascinating because you are constantly reading about her daughters being sent over to someone else's crop harvesting for three days, or a woman and her young son coming to hang out and thresh linen or pick herbs or whatever, trading back and forth a barrel of apples or other random things without it being a commerce-driven barter system: just this informal trading, constantly, of people for labor and goods.
In any case, although there were plenty of deaths from childbirth, that particular book might change your mind about how frequently deaths actually occurred. Simple practices make a big difference: the Gates Foundation (I think) did some work just handing out sterile packaged razor blades to field women in India, because their habit was to cut the umbilical cord (birthing in the field) with their harvest knife, which was usually contaminated with feces of some sort, resulting in high rates of death by fever in the first postnatal week. Even without knowledge of germ theory, there are really basic practices that could reduce death by childbirth. Something as simple as a midwife's sacred knife or something like that (maybe it's blessed in holy water, or boiled) could accidentally lead to a midwife having excellent success avoiding some of the germ-based issues. Hemorrhage (more likely in prolonged labor) or tearing are the two big ones you have to worry about.
The union of wet nurses...I still love it though I don't have an overarching vision of the society...and the idea has shades of The Handmaid's Tale, which I'd want to avoid. Needs more development.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
carisma_sensei
no subject
Date: 2011-04-27 04:38 pm (UTC)In any case, although there were plenty of deaths from childbirth, that particular book might change your mind about how frequently deaths actually occurred. Simple practices make a big difference: the Gates Foundation (I think) did some work just handing out sterile packaged razor blades to field women in India, because their habit was to cut the umbilical cord (birthing in the field) with their harvest knife, which was usually contaminated with feces of some sort, resulting in high rates of death by fever in the first postnatal week. Even without knowledge of germ theory, there are really basic practices that could reduce death by childbirth. Something as simple as a midwife's sacred knife or something like that (maybe it's blessed in holy water, or boiled) could accidentally lead to a midwife having excellent success avoiding some of the germ-based issues. Hemorrhage (more likely in prolonged labor) or tearing are the two big ones you have to worry about.
The union of wet nurses...I still love it though I don't have an overarching vision of the society...and the idea has shades of The Handmaid's Tale, which I'd want to avoid. Needs more development.