Well, once your body has done it once, it actually becomes easier, physically. Kind of like you've already warmed up the engine, you know? Another issue that affected women was the general nutrition suckage of being pregnant: today the APA recommends 2 years between giving birth & getting pregnant again, in order to let the body fully recover from the mineral loss, which is something you can only accumulate slowly through your diet. Preindustrial women who were already food insecure probably had a lot more issues with this; if their body is drained during the first pregnancy, they might have a weakened immune system later.
But as a general rule, once you've had one baby, subsequent births are not necessarily more dangerous. Your body becomes more efficient at it, you have a larger milk supply, all that great stuff. With adequate nutrition/food access, the nutritional issue isn't as much a problem.
I'd caution comparing modern accounts of multiple births, unless you're looking at women in preindustrial societies. The modern sedentary lifestyle has created a lot of problems with birthing that were absolutely not present in previous eras. The simple act of physical labor makes a huge difference in the body's preparation. There's a movement today to have women prep for birth by re-learning to squat, which opens and stretches and tones the muscles you need for birthing in a way that modern chair-sitting habits can't do.
Anyway this is all a digression. Probably far more detail that could be included in a novel without getting didactic. But it never hurt to have the background ideas, of course.
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But as a general rule, once you've had one baby, subsequent births are not necessarily more dangerous. Your body becomes more efficient at it, you have a larger milk supply, all that great stuff. With adequate nutrition/food access, the nutritional issue isn't as much a problem.
I'd caution comparing modern accounts of multiple births, unless you're looking at women in preindustrial societies. The modern sedentary lifestyle has created a lot of problems with birthing that were absolutely not present in previous eras. The simple act of physical labor makes a huge difference in the body's preparation. There's a movement today to have women prep for birth by re-learning to squat, which opens and stretches and tones the muscles you need for birthing in a way that modern chair-sitting habits can't do.
Anyway this is all a digression. Probably far more detail that could be included in a novel without getting didactic. But it never hurt to have the background ideas, of course.