The Midwives and Miracles of the Marsh

 By Tiffany Amber Stockton

There was no hospital on the island and no doctor within easy reach. Just a woman who knew what to do.

She Knew What Grew in the Marsh

When I started digging into the history of isolated coastal communities for this series, I learned a bit about midwives. When someone got sick, or a baby was on the way, they called on a woman. Usually older. Trusted by everyone within a day's travel. And she was the closest thing to a doctor most of those communities ever had.

Midwives along the Eastern Shore weren't trained in any formal school. They learned from the woman who came before them, who learned from the woman before her. They knew which plants to gather from the marsh and the kitchen garden. Mullein for coughs, plantain leaf for wounds, bayberry bark when a fever climbed too high.

A lot of that knowledge had roots in the traditions of the region's original peoples—the Powhatan and Accomack—passed along through generations of living side by side.

And they weren't just called for births. They mixed tonics, dressed wounds, sat with the dying, and managed the everyday medical crises that had no other solution when the nearest doctor was miles away across open water.

More Than Herbs and Remedies

Here's the part I find most interesting. Faith was woven directly into how these women worked.

Prayer wasn't something separate from the remedies. It was part of the care. A midwife might pray over a laboring woman, gather neighbors from the local church to stand in prayer when a fever refused to break, or whisper Scripture over a child in the night. There was no hard line between what she knew how to do and what she trusted God to do. She worked right up to the edge of her knowledge, and then she handed it over.

That resonates with me. Psalm 139 says God knit each of us together in our mother's womb. The women who spent their lives welcoming new life into those salt-air rooms knew that better than most. They had too much experience of what lay beyond human hands to believe they were ever truly in charge of an outcome. They were instruments. And they showed up anyway.

The Ones Who Went Unrecorded

The hard part of researching this topic is learning most of these women were never written down.

As professional medicine became more formal through the 1800s, midwives and folk healers got pushed out of the official record. Their knowledge was dismissed, their contributions went undocumented, and what they knew often died with them or survived only in family memory that eventually faded too. Finding their specific names and stories takes real digging, and sometimes you come up empty.

What I did find is they were trusted by their neighbors in the most vulnerable moments a person experiences. They carried knowledge no book recorded. And they were faithful, showing up in the middle of the night when someone needed them.

Midwives in the 1800s - and Now

 

By Davalynn Spencer

Women have been giving birth since … well, since Eve bore Cain. And for millennia, other women have been helping with the process. We see reference to it in the biblical book of Exodus when Egypt’s king tells the Hebrew midwives to kill the male babies of the Hebrew women but let the female babies live. (The Hebrew population was exploding.)

The midwives “feared God,” we are told, and because they wouldn’t go along with the scheme, God later blessed them ( Exodus 1:15-21). 

Hebrew midwives telling Pharaoh that the Hebrew women were "lively"
and delivered their babies before the midwives could arrive.
Pharaoh and the Midwives, c. 1896-1902, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot

Something else we see mentioned in that passage is the term “birthstools.” Artwork from ancient cultures such as Egypt, Greece, and Rome depict different chairs or stools used during the birthing process. In fact, nearly every civilization’s history mentions the use of birthing stools or chairs, and women assistants are depicted in most artistic representations.

A pregnant woman sitting in a birthing chair, attended to by three midwives.
Rueff, Jakob, ca.1500-1558, Author Publication: Zürych: Christoffel Froschover, 1554.
Wikimedia Commons

Wall relief of childbirth and birthing chair in Treasure hall, temple of Edfu, Egypt, Remih. Wikimedia Commons.

Image: American pioneer birth scene
Gustave Joseph Witkowski, 1887

In the early 19th century, at-home childbirth was still the norm. Midwives were typically women who had successfully delivered many children of their own or of others and were valued for their experience. If available, physicians were called upon only if the birth was not proceeding normally, or if the lives of mother and child were at risk.

But when male physicians and anesthesia became more involved in the birthing process, the chairs that offered a vertical gravitational help were replaced with conventional flat beds.

By the mid-1800s, women in bigger cities often went to lying-in hospitals where babies were delivered by physicians not well-versed in germ theory – an idea that had not yet taken hold across the board. However, midwives in homes seemed intuitively aware of the importance of washing hands and keeping things clean unlike physicians who would pass from patient to patient – and sometimes autopsies – without washing their hands before attending a birth.

Rural women still depended on the help of midwives – a calling that was not particularly easy. Midwives often dealt with miscarriages and still births. But many women preferred their help, not only for their skill, but for their comfort and nurturing, as portrayed in my upcoming novel, An Impossible Price.

British surgeon Joseph Lister had taken to heart the opinions and work of experts such as Ignaz Semmelweis, Oliver Wendell Homes Sr., and Louis Pasteur regarding germs and employed the use of carbolic acid on wounds and in surgical settings. His ideas and use of antiseptics were at first mocked, but later proved famously successful, and he was credited with infection-free surgeries on both Queen Victoria and her successor, King Edward VII.

By the 1880s, germ theory and the importance of disinfecting had transformed public health in hospitals and reduced the number of maternal deaths due to puerperal (childbed) fever which had been caused by the transmission of streptococci due to unwashed hands.

Physicians continued to compete with midwives in the birthing arena, and midwifery tapered off in the 1900s.

Today, as seems to be the natural turn of events, “the times they are a-changing.” More and more women are seeking midwives to help them during their prenatal, birth, and postnatal days. A close friend of mine gave birth at home to three of her four children, and her oldest daughter has done the same. However, in the United States, midwifery is now controlled by laws that vary from state to state.

Only a certified nurse-midwife may assist at-home births in Iowa and North Carolina. In California, midwives must be under the supervision of an on-scene doctor, and other states have varying parameters.

As of July 2017, it was illegal to work as a midwife in twenty-three of the fifty states. Those who did so could be arrested for practicing medicine without a license. However, certified nurse-midwives are allowed to practice in all fifty states.

Do you know of anyone who has experienced, assisted with, or arrived via a home birth? Comment below, and I’ll bundle your name in the bassinet for a drawing for an Advanced Reader e-Copy (ARC) of my upcoming book, An Impossible Price. A random winner will be drawn May 22.

Coming June 4, 2020

Bestselling author and winner of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion for Inspirational Western Fiction, Davalynn Spencer can’t stop #lovingthecowboy. When she’s not writing Western romance, she teaches writing workshops and wrangles Blue the Cowdog and mouse detectors Annie and Oakley.

Childbirth in Colonial America

by Elaine Marie Cooper

In a recent conversation with my very pregnant daughter-in-law, we discussed childbirth practices, from the time I gave birth to my son—her husband—to the current trends. Back when I had my babies, hospital births were the norm and mostly male physicians delivered babies. 

Today, my daughter-in-law sees a doctor regularly but will have a midwife assisted birth in the hospital. If any complications occur, a doctor is just a step away.

While most childbirths throughout history have involved midwife assistance, the last centuries of doctor-assised birthings may leave many with misunderstandings about the history of giving birth. In summation, midwives have delivered most of earth’s inhabitants throughout the millenia. 

In fact, the introduction of male-assisted birth practitioners in the late 18^thcentury was quite shocking to many.

         In 1998, I was thrilled to visit the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. While I have forgotten many of the historical displays, one definitely stands out in my memory. It was a poster depicting a “Man Midwife.” 

The title alone was enough to intrigue me, especially since I was a registered nurse, then working in a mother/baby unit at a local hospital. The display at the Smithsonian highlighted the debate going on in the late 1700s concerning male physicians undertaking the business of delivering babies. I believe I remember the phrase “Half Man, Half Midwife: Man Midwife.” 

This picture shows a person of two parts— half physician with his tools of the trade, including forceps and medications; the other half, a female midwife with her arms outstretched in motherly care. The symbolism of interfering medical practitioner vs. comforting, female arms was loud and clear. But the image was also prompted by the disapproval of many who were offended by males becoming involved in such intimate medical care of women.

  A letter addressed to “All men in general and to all married men in particular,” was written in 1764 by Philip Thicknesse. His words expressed his outrage at the growing practice:

“Let it be remembered that my motive is thereby to put a stop to impure acts, immodest actions, and the indelicate, unchaste, and unnecessary transactions of Men Midwives, such as they avowedly and publicly profess and such that every man of sense, decency, sentiment, and spirit must and will disapprove, or be totally indifferent as to his wife’s conduct or his own honor.”

             Considering the history of childbirth, it is not surprising that only female midwives were considered the acceptable assistants in the birthing process. 

Since earliest recorded childbirths in the Bible, midwives were called upon to assist in a birth. And ever since Bridget Lee Fuller delivered the first Colonial babies on board the Mayflower in 1620, midwives had established themselves as the ones to call upon when labor began in the New World. For the next 200 years, midwifery reigned.

 Midwives did not go to school to learn the craft—the skill was taught by other women. There was no formal training in the early colonies until 1765 when an institute for training was offered in Philadelphia. But many could not afford such schooling and most still apprenticed under more experienced trainers. Many midwives were widows who delivered babies as a way to make a living.

  When a pregnant woman knew that birth was imminent, she “called her women together” for the event. Friends, relatives, the midwife—whoever a woman wanted to attend her and speak words of comfort to her—became a part of the birthing scene. It was definitely a female affair, although occasionally, husbands were needed to assist.

  Childbirth in Early America was especially difficult. One in eight births resulted in the death of the mother, usually as a result of exhaustion, dehydration, infection, or excessive bleeding. Women often looked toward impending childbirth with dread, one referring to it as “the greatest of earthly miseries.” 

  A midwife with great skills was highly valued. A diary kept by a late 18^thcentury midwife from Maine named Martha Ballard describes the difficult life that she faced—fording rivers in winter, spending hours and days tending to laboring patients, and occasionally, preparing a deceased patient for burial. But Martha’s record was a successful one for the times: Out of 996 deliveries, there were only four fatalities.

  Highly devoted to her profession, Martha continued delivering infants in her community until just before her death in 1812 at the age of 77.

  But long before Martha Ballard passed away, the tide was beginning to turn.

  By the late 1700s, doctors in England had begun to play a greater role in childbirths. They, in turn, influenced American doctors who trained across the ocean and then brought these ideas home. The practice of physician-assisted childbirth became popular in the urban areas of Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. These man-midwives brought with them medications and forceps. While the forceps could be helpful during difficult deliveries—perhaps saving many infants and mothers who would otherwise have died—the physicians tended to interfere more in a delivery rather than allowing the child to be born at a natural pace like the midwives.

  By 1790, midwifery was losing ground to the doctor-assisted delivery. But midwives continued to reign in many areas as the main caregivers of laboring women.            

Today the art of midwife-assisted deliveries is on the rise. Approximately 9% of American babies slip into the world with the help of a midwife. There are currently over 12,000 Certified Nurse Midwives in the United States.

 The shift towards the middle ground, with many certified midwives assisting births and physicians available in case of emergency, makes it seem like the perfect time for my daughter-in-law to give birth.   
(Update on my daughter-in-law: She gave birth on August 17 to Endeavor James Cooper, 8 lbs. 13 oz. Endeavor "Indy" was born on my son's birthday—his daddy! Brianna had a midwife assisted delivery.) 

Elaine Marie Cooper is the author of several historical novels including War’s Respite(Prequel novella) and Love’s Kindling. Love’s Kindling is available in both e-book and paperback. They are the first two books in the Dawn of America Series set in Revolutionary War Connecticut. Cooper is the award-winning author of Fields of the Fatherless and Bethany’s Calendar. Her 2016 release (Saratoga Letters) was finalist in Historical Romance in both the Selah Awards and Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She penned the three-book Deer Run Saga and has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies. You can visit her website/ blog at www.elainemariecooper.com

   

Having a Baby in the 19th Century

by Kiersti Giron

"The New Arrival," By David Henry Friston, fl. 1850s to late 1880s Artnet.com, Public Domain

The coming of a baby has been a source of wonder and joy since time began. Last month, my husband and I were blessed by the birth of our first baby, a little son, and it's given me a new connection and empathy with mothers throughout time. For this post, we'll take a journey back to what having a baby was like during the 19th century, followed soon by a post on baby care during the same period. I hope you enjoy the ride!


Home vs. Hospital

18th/19th century midwifery log,
possibly owned by Timothy Watkins. Wikimedia Commons

In the earlier decades of the 19th century, midwives tended laboring women almost exclusively, and the vast majority of babies were born at home. While women widely feared the pain and danger of childbirth--and indeed, death in childbirth was common--midwives brought the knowledge and wisdom of generations of women to ease the birthing process as much as possible. Only poor women had their babies in hospitals until the early 1900s, and these "lying in" hospitals were notorious for maternal death, with infections running rampant due to doctors not washing their hands between patients and other unsanitary practices.

Doctors and Forceps

Obstetrical Case, including forceps, mid-19th century. By Welcome Images, https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/a4/c5/5a56ebb92aa1e3d1da13bacc13f7.jpgGallery

With the growing popularity of forceps in the 19th century, doctors began to regularly enter the birthing room for the first time, since they were the ones trained in the use of forceps. This technological invention changed other aspects of childbirth also, such as position. Whereas previously women tended to give birth in a more upright position--which we now know is optimal in easing and expediting the baby's birth--now they started lying on their backs in bed to facilitate the use of forceps.

Anesthesia

Young Queen Victoria, By Franz Xaver Winterhalter - Osborne House, Isle of Wight,
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1299559

Queen Victoria was famously the first woman to demand chloroform anesthesia during childbirth. While anesthesia during birth didn't become widespread until the 20th century, it began during the 19th, though it was often dangerous and generally frowned upon. But in an era when the pain of childbirth was emphasized as God's curse upon Eve--never mind that the word for "pain" in Genesis 3 is the same one translated "toil" for Adam--Victoria's success proved a significant precedent, though the growth of anesthesia paved the way for the horrors of twilight sleep in the early 20th century and other less-than-positive interventions.

"Lying In" - Postpartum Care

The Young Mother by Charles West Cope, 1845. Valerie McGlinchey,
CC BY-SA 2.0 uk, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9977581

As I've been in postpartum recovery mode myself, the 19th century rules for mothers recovery from childbirth were particularly interesting to me. Women were encouraged to stay in bed for some time--no huge surprise there--and not even to get up into a chair until at least the tenth day, according to one 1800s manual. Another, Elizabeth Robinson's Scovil's 1896 Preparation for Motherhood, insists that new mothers not even talk! According to her:


"After all that the newly made mother has undergone, she needs perfect quiet for several hours before she is permitted to see anyone. A five-minute interview with her husband is all that should be granted. However well she feels, quiet should be insisted upon. Excitement is dangerous and no visitors must be permitted to enter the room, nor should conversation be allowed, even if she wishes to talk. Neglect of this precaution may cause serious disaster, even when all seems to be going on well."

Of course, not all women would have had the luxury of resting the four or five weeks recommended by the experts; still, these old-fashioned guidelines can remind us that in most traditional cultures, new mothers are surrounded by a community giving tender loving care for the first month or so to give her and her baby the best possible start.


Now that her baby was born, the 19th century mother, like any other, moved into the next stage of life: motherhood and infant care. But that will be a topic for my next post!


So, how much did you know about 19th century childbirth? What details are most interesting to you? What things are you glad have changed? Please comment and share!




Kiersti Giron holds a life-long passion for history and historical fiction. She loves to write stories that show the intersection of past and present, explore relationships that bridge cultural divides, and probe the healing Jesus can bring out of brokenness. Kiersti has been published in several magazines and won the 2013 and 2018 ACFW Genesis Awards - Historical for two of her novel manuscripts. An English teacher and member of American Christian Fiction Writers, Kiersti loves learning and growing with other writers penning God's story into theirs, as well as blogging at www.kierstigiron.com. She lives in California with her husband, their two kitties, and their new baby boy.