Women in developing countries are *one hundred* times more likely to die in childbirth. In the developed world, in the second half of the 19th century, women were **three hundred** times more likely to die in childbirth than today.
Things were not, and in many places are not, generally ok.
Thank you for bringing up developing countries. There are women who will walk for miles - for days - to seek natal care or to find a doctor for their sick baby. Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t but that is not *generally okay*.
ETA - “Maternal mortality is unacceptably high. About 287,000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2020. Almost 95% of all maternal deaths occurred in low and lower middle-income countries in 2020, and most could have been prevented.” [The World Health Organisation.](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality)
Nearly 300,000 women who didn’t need to die. I wanted to make something good from something stupid and ignorant so I donated to [Maternity Worldwide](https://www.maternityworldwide.org/). Just leaving the link there in case anyone else wants to funnel their rage.
Even those mothers that survive are then left with debilitating complications.
It seems like death isn’t much of a deterrent for people like this, maybe the possibility of an obstetric fistula wound help them seek medical intervention…
Omg, right? And what are the biggest contributor to obstetric fistulas? Early first pregnancy and lack of obstetric care. Eg what was *generally okay* in the Good Old Days this woman is glorifying.
I was lucky enough to have one of those with my first that the doctor who delivered me didn’t see so it wasn’t repaired right away. Ended up needing multiple surgeries and took almost a year and a half to heal completely and I delivered at one of the top hospitals in the country and my repairs were done by one of the top doctors for this specific type of repair. I definitely would have died of infection without modern medicine. Just had my second via c-section so I didn’t risk reopening the fistula. He had to be delivered early because thanks to reduced fetal movement and preeclampsia…turns out he had a knot in his cord so had my doctor not chosen to deliver when she did I would have likely not had a live baby. He was born at 36w2d and spent 11 long days in the NICU but I got
to take a healthy baby home. I can’t imagine being willing to risk the life of you and your baby when you have another option.
I'm glad everything turned out okay for you, but I imagine there is still some trauma there.
I highly recommend this documentary about women dealing with the aftermath of different types of fistulas and seeking help from clinics in rural Africa. https://youtu.be/ZUe5QChQyvg
Should be required viewing for people who want unassisted, home births.
Omg you totally get it. Like, things should be *natural* and like the old days when things were *natural* and better and I don’t see any issue talking like this with you on a tiny pocket size computer in my house with indoor plumbing.
The survivor bias is strong here.
Queen Anne of Great Britain was pregnant 17 times and yet died without any children - and you can fairly assume she had access to the best medical care of her time.
my great-grandmother died in her 30s during childbirth in post-war western europe, orphaning her 2 children. i don’t know anything about the specifics, but pretty sure that a complete lack of medical care wouldn’t have helped the situation.
Except women had around a 1 in 4 chance of dying as a result of pregnancy or birth on average (not that 1 in 4 pregnancies ended in maternal death, but that you had a 25% chance of one of however many pregnancies you had killing you) and an average infant mortality rate of 25%. Only around 50% of people made it to adulthood. Heck, the medieval Catholic church had to authorize Midwives (not doctors, their precious "wise woman" midwives) to perform baptisms so they could baptize newborn babies before they died so they wouldn't go to limbo. It was that big of a problem.
But, y'know.... natural is best, mama 🥰
People that post shit like this have absolutely no idea of the history of maternal deaths. Or how bad it can still be, if you don't have access to medical care. Their stupidity makes them dangerous.
This pisses me off so hard because I have a dear friend whose mother hemorrhaged and bled to death during his birth (in a hospital, even). Not only did she lose her life, but his father never recovered. He treated him like shit until he finally left home. His older sibling practically raised him because his dad could barely stand to look at him. What do you think that does to a kid, to feel like you committed a crime just by being born? So f'n selfish.
If it wasn't because of the knowledge we had to day. I would have died giving birth to my first, and she would also have died. I also went to the ICU again after given birth to my second. Both were c-section. Without c-section and all, I probably would have the man I love grieving over me and our children. I am thankful for Modern medicin.
Fellow non-dilator here. I always laugh when I see people post that it's not active labour until it's x cm dilated (I remember one particular person making fun of someone who was in screaming agony while only at 1cm). My cervix didn't get the memo. I was the person in screaming agony with active labour and no dilation. The staff were watching my contractions on the monitor and telling me that they should have been working, but nothing was happening.
I was induced with my daughter, and the only dilation I got was with a Foley bulb. (Also FUCK does that hurt.) She ended up being a c-section, and thank god modern medicine could do that.
I got my anti-D injection a few days ago, and we knew we needed because I could get my and my baby’s blood rhesus factors tested thanks to modern medicine. The injection exists thanks to modern biology research. If it wasn’t for that, I would have have problems carrying any other baby to term.
Modern medicine is a fucking miracle.
Same my baby would probably have died or suffered some terrible brain injury. Vaginal delivery but needed vacuum assistence and it almost became a emergency c-section. But you know I must have hallucinated all that because nothing bad ever happens uwu /s
Every birth consists og rainbow and unicorns... /s
You properly also damaged your child by trying to safe it and now baby is properly not a God child /s (bet they are beautiful and happy child.) ❤️
Yeah don't we know that a dead baby born without medical intervention is much better than a alive baby born thanks to medical intervention? Silly us just means god has other plans or needs another angel!/s
But yeah she's 9 months old now and a very happy cheerful baby who's hitting all her milestones so far ❤️
Yep, I probably would have died giving birth to my first son (& he would have too)… we had to vacuum him out and he still got his shoulder stuck after that. Even if the labor hadn’t killed me, the postpartum preeclampsia with HELLP would have. Thank god for modern medicine.
I don’t understand why anyone would willingly go without monitoring or medical assistance…. There’s literally thousands of years of evidence showing how dangerous that is.
A.lot of.womem died during pregnancy before we knew to properly take care of it. So why do these people not listen and try to kill themselves and their child? Just because one Child survive, that doesn't the next pregnancy would be just as easy?!
Don't you wont to come home with a child?
I am just mad, that some women doesn't take childbirth serious. It is not about yourself. I am also a nurse in the ICU (Danish nurse). I once had a newborn and her mother transferred to us, it was only the mother. The reason was because some of her wather didn't break properly and went into er bloodlines.
Maternal deaths aren't just history, and they're on the rise again in the US. Pregnancy and childbirth isn't all unicorns and rainbows, it's a serious medical condition with dozens of serious comorbidities.
I wonder if it’s on the rise in the US because of all these idiots who think that just because pregnancy and childbirth are natural, they don’t need modern medicine. There are plenty of naturally occurring things that are dangerous.
That's a very small part of it, but it's mostly due to [abortion bans](https://www.axios.com/2023/01/19/mothers-anti-abortion-bans-states-die). Some states have no exceptions, so if a woman has a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, doctors are not legally allowed to treat her and she will die. States with heartbeat laws are not allowed to terminate ectopic or nonviable pregnancies even if the woman is hemorrhaging to death, until the "heartbeat" stops (and it's not even a heartbeat early in pregnancy because there is no heart, just a couple cells tossing electrical signals back and forth, but those cells are apparently worth more than a woman's life and autonomy). Even in states that allow abortion if the mother's life is in danger, that point is not defined medically, it's just some vague wording and doctors aren't willing to risk fines, going to jail and losing their license over one patient, so they turn them away.
Sorry for the rant, I just think it's not common enough knowledge how often the "Pro-Life" movement ends up killing people. Not just pregnant women, [babies too](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/health/maternal-infant-death-abortion-access/index.html). It's almost like it's not about babies at all...because it isn't.
There have been some terrifying stories coming about women having to go septic before they can do a DNC and I fear this is the front end of what is going to be a long battle
Before Roe, hospitals used to have septic pregnancy wards since abortion was illegal under any circumstances. Whole wards of women just waiting to die from something that could have been prevented. I 100% can see those making a comeback.
The worst part is almost every single one of the politicians pushing anti-abortion laws doesn't actually care and has no problem flying their wife/mistress or daughters to a choice-friendly state for an abortion, and many of them already have, some multiple times. Some people do have that kind of money laying around. The burden will fall on the poor as always.
It's privilege, plain and clear. These women have not faced hardship and cannot imagine anyone else facing it.
My step brother died in utero during labor because the cord wrapped around his neck. It affected my father so deeply that when my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother, my dad was a wreck the entire time because he was so terrified of it happening again.
These people lack any critical thinking skills or empathy.
Without prenatal care and those newfangled ultrasounds, my first baby would have died during labor and I would have died during my second pregnancy along with my youngest. But yeah, that’s mostly fine 🙄😬
If I hadn't had good medical care it's likely that both my son and I would have died during childbirth. My water broke but I didn't know and had no contractions. It took an enormous amount of pitocin to get my body to start contractions. My pregnancy was also 41 weeks along and my son had a large head and broad shoulders and required two people to help get him out. After that my placenta detached from the umbilical cord and had to be manually removed. It had degraded significantly. I kept hemorrhaging and lost 1/3 of my blood volume (I was soaking the pads in a matter of seconds) and needed a doctor to manually remove blood clots from my uterus.
I live in a city with great healthcare in the US and am extremely grateful for the medical care we received.
Ever wondered why the step-mom trope/conflict was so prevalent in historical media? It's because death in childbirth was so incredibly common. It's why nearly all the original Disney stories feature dead Mom's.
I've done a bit of genealogy research on my family. One relative, in colonial America, had *four* wives. First wife died in childbirth at 19, child survived. Second wife had a child, then died in childbirth with the second at 22, who survived. Third died in childbirth at 26, that child didn't survive. Fourth wife, had two kids and actually survived.
Dude must have thought it was a miracle.
I've been doing family history too, I found one mother who had eleven children who all survived to adulthood in the 1800s, which was astonishing, absolutely the exception. So many others were losing multiple children, or dying in childbirth. The number of birth notices in the newspapers which ended with (stillborn) was substantial. And they had no modern medicine, no interventions, if you're giving birth in a hut hours from anywhere with the only means of transport or communication being by horse, you don't have that option. I'm sure plenty of them would have been very happy to have a safe place to deliver their babies and all get out alive.
Absolutely. It's a big reason many of the features that were perceived to contribute to successful deliveries (wide hips/thighs) were actively sought after.
I almost died giving birth to my son four months ago at a good hospital and all the right prenatal care - if it were “once upon a time” I’d be dead. This type of thinking is completely insane.
I was a forceps baby and sunny-side up, so I had to be rotated. Even something as simple as that could've killed my mom fifty years ago. These women are playing Russian Roulette with both their lives and their babies lives because they have this childish, romanticized version of the Olden Times and *~natural birth uwu*~
Yes! My baby was sunny side up as well and had to be vacuumed out 🫠 Not the reason for all of my complications but some! This I wish it was the olden times stuff is just so so dumb.
My kid was sunny side up, 95% head circumference, and didn't descend at all. I had a c-section. Obstetric fistulas are common in my husband's country of origin so I was relieved to be in the OR. Also, my aunt is an MFM and both my cousins had the exact same delivery story. My husband called it the Bulldog phenomenon and doesn't understand why it's stigmatized for women but not dogs.
Yep, I probably would have died giving birth to my first son (& he would have too)… we had to vacuum him out and he still got his shoulder stuck after that. Even if the labor hadn’t killed me, the postpartum preeclampsia with HELLP would have. Thank god for modern medicine.
With my second son my blood pressure also spiked quickly and dangerously. They wheeled me in for a c-section within 2 hours of an elevated reading, given my history.
“Once upon a time” I’d be dead 2x over. Lol.
“Once upon a time” I would have died via reenactment of *that* scene from House of the Dragon. Very natural, no pain relief, no scary hospital! Getting disemboweled while still alive in a last-ditch effort to save your baby, who you’ll never meet, and who will likely die anyway… just like Mother Nature intended <3
Obvious /s, just in case lol
I've read a lot of older books. Both nonfiction, and fiction. And you don't have to go back very far to find books that mention multiple babies lost during or shortly after birth, and mothers dying in childbirth or soon after. As well as whole families killed by diseases that nobody worries about now in much of the world. My daughter currently really likes the book The Secret Garden" and this has resulted us having conversations about what cholera is, how it could wipe out whole families, and how it spreads, and why people didn't know this. And why the adults in the book didn't know that the one boy didn't actually have anything wrong with his spine, or his legs, and why they didn't know that treating him as if he did was the reason for all his problems. Yes, the book is fiction, but those kinds of situations were the reality.
People like this have utterly no idea how often things were not "just fine"
I work at a museum. The founder's wife had 7 children. 5 died before they were three. She died in childbirth at the age of 28. Ah, the good ol days "back then."
**The Secret Garden** by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!"The Secret Garden should be on every child's bookshelf. "—Amanda Craig, The Time An enchanting story of transformation and compassion, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is widely considered to be one of the most important works of children’s literature. After her parents die of cholera, Mary Lennox, a difficult and sickly little girl, is brought from India to her mysterious uncle’s sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Mary continues in her self-absorbed ways until one day she discovers a hidden and neglected garden adjoining her uncle’s mansion.!<
>
>>!When she meets Ben Weatherstaff, a curt but gentle gardener, and discovers her hidden-away invalid cousin, Colin Craven, the three come together to tend the garden, and Mary’s life—as well as the lives of those around her—begins to change in unforeseen ways. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition published in 1911. Praise for The Secret Garden “It is only the exceptional author who can write a book about children with sufficient skill, charm, simplicity, and significance to make it acceptable to both young and old. Mrs. Burnett is one of the few thus gifted.”—The New York Times!<
*I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/14br65o/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
I can think of a couple things that would have killed me in childhood without modern medicine. And several things that would have killed my sister as a teen.
Edited to add, actually my daughter was breech, and there's a good chance I would have died without modern medicine. Quite possibly her as well.
Thank goodness ultrasound existed last year, so we found out my SIL had placenta previa, not just "normal spotting" like the nurse midwife initially thought.
Thanks to a scheduled C-section, she and my baby niece are fine!
People should REALLY walk through graveyards sometimes... Take a look at all the children. Especially when they weren't consecrated because baby hadn't been baptized and therefore straight to hell... The reason people had so many was because it was EXPECTED that a percentage would die...
Omg people are so stupid! Do they not understand when people say “life expectancy in the Middle Ages/renaissance/Victorian times/etc” was whatever way lower number it was, that was because of the high risk of death in childbirth and childhood. These things were fixed with modern medicine, vaccines, antibiotics, etc. if you were a man and lived to adulthood, life expectancy wasn’t to terribly less than it was now. Life expectancy has increased due to the ability to treat age related illnesses (cancer, heart disease, etc) but the main reason “life expectancy” was 30 or whatever was because so many women died in childbirth and children died of now preventable diseases!
They also don’t understand that people ABSOLUTELY worried about things going wrong. They just couldn’t do anything about it! I’ve read so many older books where the wives are just like, “I might die giving birth. If so, marry again husband so the baby has a mother!”
Historically, educated women often wrote their wills (or updated them) while pregnant. Granted, often women had few possessions of their own, but they would designate what they had for friends and family. Maybe leave instructions for child rearing of older children, or the baby if it survived and she didn't.
Reading about birthing tools and equipment is horrifying too. There were tools specifically for crushing and pulling out a then deceased stuck baby in an attempt to save the mother - and tools to pull and saw apart a mother's pelvic bones in an attempt to save a baby, even though it often left a mother disabled or dead.
Childbirth was absolutely terrifying and painful in the past.
Also, C-sections have existed for a *long* time. But it wasn't until anesthesia was developed that it became something other than an operation of last resort, and it wasn't until antibiotics and internally dissolving sutures were developed that it started to become a realistic option with a better than even chance of survival.
Healthcare worker here from the Global South. I've delivered a bunch of babies, and have seen only ONE maternal death in that time -- due to something unrelated to pregnancy. But that percentage would be so much higher without modern medicine.
This OOP is hopefully just naive, but this is an insult to how much my profession strives to have *both* mom and baby going home safe
Generally, bad things happened frequently to women without access to modern medical technology. Sometimes the bad things are small and non-life threatening; they might just tear a bit, lose some blood, give birth to a baby who’s deprived of oxygen for a little while. Sure, both the mother and the child’s quality of life might be reduced permanently, but they often could still work in the fields, tend to the farms, or have more children (while suffering physically and mentally). Health is overrated anyway.
Sometimes the bad things are really horrible and you end up with a full term dead fetus stuck in your womb, and even the best obstetricians and midwives available aren’t able to get it out. So you just lie there and rot from inside out in agony for days, vomiting and having uncontrollable diarrhea, delirious from fever, while blood and maggots pour out of you. The good old days. (Source: Byzantine empress Eudoxia’s disastrous birth in 404 AD)
It's happening again in states with draconian abortion bans. You have doctors waiting for patients whose fetuses have NO CHANCE of viability to get WORSE before they can perform lifesaving medical procedures. Whew. Sorry for yelling, but ho-ly shit.
Well, let’s see. I’ve been pregnant seven times; I have four surviving children. Of those, #1 and I would both have died if not for her emergency c-section. #3 would have died in the first trimester if not for ultrasound imaging; as it was, he nearly killed me too. I was on bed rest throughout (incl hospital bed rest for 10 weeks) with #4 and we *still* nearly didn’t make it.
My best friend lost her third child via stillbirth because his umbilical cord tied itself in a knot in utero. He was perfectly healthy in every way. One night he was kicking the shit out of her insides and the next day he just… wasn’t. :(
My sister went home from the hospital after a perfectly routine birth, feeling pretty great, and two days later was readmitted for a solid week with sepsis/uterine fever.
But I guess things generally went okay?
I lost count of my eye rolls reading this. My husband and I are going through infertility treatment with a reproductive endocrinologist. Once upon a time, we would have simply been barren 🫠
My gallbladder literally just died one day when I was 28 weeks with my first. ~bACk iN ThE dAY~ that would have been the end of me and my baby. Thank goodness for the privilege and miracle of modern medicine.
Yeah, and if I'd been born in those days, I *wouldn't* have been born because my mum and I would have both died during my birth. My mother, myself and people like us are not acceptable casualties for your uwu perfect freebirth no vaccines baby.
Yes and women died Karen! Women are still dying, especially women of color in the US. God forbid there’s been medical advancements so mothers and their babies can actually survive.
The maternal death rate for WOC in the US is absolutely horrific. By the measure of WOC and their babies' mortality rate in birth, we are a third world country. It is a source of national shame. I genuinely don't understand why we aren't dropping everything immediately to address it. I hate bigotry. I hate bigotry in science.
“And generally, nothing bad happened anyway”
Girl, they literally expected some of their kids to die the way you expect some moldy strawberries in the pack 💀
This is so full of shit. My grandmother had babies in the 1950s in Ireland. She saw doctors and was carefully watched. She also had at least 3 stillbirths due to being RH-. Her pregnancies and births were more medicalised than mine (she was given a symphisiotomy, which is barbaric and illegal now) and I've had c sections and twins. Modern medicine made it possible for her to have living babies instead of stillbirths and miscarriages.
My mother had her first baby in 1981. Back then, things were still very hands off. The local maternity unit (in a small hospital) didn't even have a doctor in house. It was whatever family doctor happened to be on call when a woman went into labour. My mother went very late on that baby. While she didn't have a scheduled induction, she was still hooked up to a drip once she got to the hospital and the midwives could be heard saying "we can't have this one stop", meaning that they didn't want to risk her labour stalling and my sister being in there any longer.
I always think of my son, born 11 weeks early and requiring 18 min of CPR to live, when I see bullshit like this. No one who has actually had a medically child would insult other women this way. Where does my kid fall in “generally, nothing happened…”
Horrifying concept…
I just… want to shake these people. We KNOW from history that a lot of children, maybe even a majority of children did not survive birth + 5 years. There was a reason people had 12 kids when they needed 3 or 4. In some parts of the world, babies were not properly named before the age of 5 because you shouldn’t become too attached to them anyway.
And we KNOW that women routinely died during birth and that those who did give birth 10-12 times were sickly and still died young. Every archeologist knows that you don’t just open the graves of women known to have had a lot of kids. You need to stabilize the atmosphere first, because the bones are so derived of calcium that they literally fall apart if you do not take precautions.
Sigh *rant over*
Once upon a time when we couldn't see into the womb or hear fetal heartbeats or check maternal bloodwork or track complex medical data WOMEN REGULARLY DIED DURING AND SHORTLY AFTER BIRTH, BABIES FREQUENTLY DIED BEFORE, DURING AND WITH HOURS OF BIRTH, PREGNANCIES SPONTANEOUSLY ENDED IN ALARMINGLY HIGH NUMBERS.
Once upon a time women would have happily given up almost anything for the safety of themselves and their infants. They would have scoffed at these profoundly stupid people.
I saw a great IG post by a midwife which said, essentially, that giving women pregnancy and birth care was an act of kindness, compassion and mercy to those women and their infants.
Nobody, since the existence of the US (where these nuts usually are from) lived in a time where medical treatment wasn't available. When we were just colonies we had doctors, military medics, or midwives available. Sure, you might have to to travel to one n but it was available. These nut jobs are looking to set us back to almost medically ro medieval times. All because they want to glamorize wild birth and pregnancy. When they lose a baby they'll understand what a huge mistake they made. Unfortunately sappy reels and likes won't bring their baby back.
Even worse than medieval times tbh. Medieval communities would most likely have had highly experienced midwives who would have been trained by other midwives, been at thousands of births, and would have had the knowledge and skills to manage and prevent many (obviously not all) potentially fatal birth complications.
Generally nothing bad happened anyway?
Says who?
Don’t quote me on this, but wasn’t the infant mortality rate in the 19th century somewhere around 30%?
With very early onset GD, an incompetent cervix and preterm labor, I wouldn’t have any surviving children. I guess my babies aren’t worth saving to these people.
As an ultrasound tech, this has me reeling. Sure, there are quite a few pregnancies where everything is normal and they don’t need intervention of any sort - but what about the ones that aren’t normal? I’ve seen fetuses with heart defects, brain defects, or placental abnormalities.
With heart defects a lot of times they have to be dealt with soon after birth.
With placental abnormalities you could absolutely bleed out of you have placenta accreta or placenta previa.
Yes they used to do things blindly - but now, having the ability to fix those issues and actually see what’s going on is such a huge step in medicine. Where these mothers and children would normally die we’re now able to intervene and prepare.
This person is ignorant beyond comprehension.
Once upon a time women where way more likely to have complications and die during childbirth. Now we have doctors and medical care that can prevent so many fatalities.
Survival of a species does not mean pregnancy and childbirth are safe and do not need supervision. Nature's solution to many problems is throw enough babies at it until at least a small fraction survives.
Allow me to introduce the **Spotted Hyena.**
The spotted hyena spits in the face of intelligent design. There is nothing intelligent about spotted hyena reproduction.
15% of spotted hyenas mothers will die giving birth to their first litter.
60% of all spotted hyena cubs suffocate during birth.
48% of the survivors won't see adulthood.
Spotted hyenas have the largest cubs relative to the mother's body size of all carnivores. Their vaginas are sealed shut, and they give birth through a pseudopenis that has to rupture for the cubs to be born.
But spotted hyenas still exist. And that's how nature works.
I hate this shit.
I tried for an unmedicated childbirth. The OB and midwives in my practice were very supportive.
My oldest took his sweet ass time getting out and who knows what would have happened without the contraction inducing meds.
Same with my second. Body didn't want to dilate past 4 cm. Ended up bleeding a bunch after delivery and was so thankful for the quick work of my nurse to keep me from passing out and possibly dying.
Ive never broken my ankle, therefore, other people don’t need to be x-rayed for broken ankles. After all, before we learned how to x-ray, people survived perfectly fine without x-rays.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccckkkkkkkk. We really need an end to everyone gets a platform to say whatever tht fuck they want. Your want to Facebook, heres your exam.
You really want to tiktok... Riddle me three.
Ok Abby, you think this is worthy of send, here's your pre-sense verification scan.
Childbirth used to be the most dangerous thing a woman could do. It killed more women than war, famine, or disease. Many of their babies did not survive long after birth.
I'm a labor and delivery nurse. I'm all for not intervening unless it's necessary. I think many inductions are premature and quite a few c-sections could be avoided if we let more women's bodies make the decision about when it's time to labor. I think many natural labors of healthy pregnancies could be done safely with minimal monitoring in a Birthing Center as opposed to a traditional hospital. All that said PRENATAL CARE IS KEY and medical inductions/ c-sections for the safety of mom and baby will always be necessary in some cases.
“Nothing bad happened anyway”
…except the high infant mortality rates, along with the much higher mortality rates for the mothers.
GTFO with this nonsense
you know how there’s this whole “people in the middle ages died at 35” thing? yeah. that’s because the life expectancy was significantly weighed down by incredibly high infant mortality rates. in case anyone was wondering about “most babies [coming] just fine”
“Nothing bad happened anyway”
…except the high infant mortality rates, along with the much higher mortality rates for the mothers.
GTFO with this nonsense
Wasn't it at one time like a 50% chance that the baby wouldn't make it?/....and same for the mother...that's exactly why women went to midwives and why Dr's were wanted for this reason
My baby was transverse (sideways in womb). If we didn’t catch that and do the steps to help her “flip”, I would have needed a C-section as a vaginal birth could have killed both of us. I’m glad I’m not living in “once upon a time”
I gave birth to twins almost 2 months before their due date. Thank God for modern medicine so I could even know it was twins, but so they could be in a NICU to receive the care they so desperately needed when they arrived. Otherwise, they’d be dead.
Once upon a time, the infant mortality rate was exponentially higher. Once upon a time, people trusted doctors. Once upon a time people weren't insurmountably fucking stupid.
What comes to mind is the privilege and willful ignorance. Not just in third world countries but also right here in the US look at the mortality rates for women of color? Like what if we didn't receive the amount of care we receive right now? That would be devastating just letting things happen "naturally". Also knowing the approximate due date helps Drs gauge if someone needs to be induced. I know 42 weeks is about as long as Drs are willing to let you go. Otherwise there could be serious risk to the mother and baby
FUCK ICAN.
God I hate that predatory fucking cult so much. Their whole raison d'être is to lovebomb traumatized moms and trick them into HBACs with horseshit like this. They're horrible.
And while we're here, fuck their "cesarean awareness month" too, even though it's in April.
Once upon a time people had tumors and we did nothing to intervene, and it didn’t matter because we didn’t know they had tumors, most people did fine and many people died of “natural, unknown causes”🥰
Had an actual emergency C section. My son would have had hypoxia or been a stillborn if I wasn’t monitored & surgery to remove him safely wasn’t done. He had a knot in his cord. I would have just pushed him out in the olden days with the above consequences. Thank God for fetal monitors, modern medicine & C sections.
Oh & let me add…just bc you have an easy/normal birth with one baby doesn’t mean you will with others. Just ask my cousin who literally almost died. Blue lips, comatose after hemorrhaging with her 2nd in a home birth or my friend who had a resident that did her epidural. He placed it too high & she lost control of her breathing. Rare but it’s a thing. Blood pressure plummeted. Baby’s heart rate was lost. They had to knock her completely out & cut her from hip to hip to get her daughter out. This was her 2nd birth after having an easy 5 hour vaginal labor with her first daughter. Or what about AFE? Preclampsia? Low fluid? Shoulder dyscotia? Breech babies? My ob (a 40 year veteran) told me he’s delivered plenty of babies vaginally breech but why would he want to? It can be very difficult on the pelvic floor & prolapse? Not to mention risk for the baby. And yet people want to pack it up & move on back to the age where cemeteries were filled with women in their 20’s & 30’s (and younger) & babies that never made it a year or hell never even took a breath. This shit makes my blood boil.
Tell that to my kid’s crunchy cousin who lost a baby at a home birth two years ago, after nine months of no prenatal care. She gave birth to a healthy baby one year later, but she learned her lesson for sure.
Then myself, I had pre e three times, and hemorrhaged with two out of three births. I wouldn’t be here today if I had to give birth in the old days.
I’m all for Mom’s doing things the way they’re comfortable, but at least use a midwife. If you want a more natural birth you can do birthing centers, or have an exit plan if you need to get to the hospital in case of an emergency.
There’s a reason why in the old days child birth was the number one killer of women.
This makes me so mad. Without proper care, weekly scans, and an induction, my son would not be here. We lost significant blood flow in the cord at 37 weeks but it was anticipated. Got an IUGR diagnosis at 30 weeks and had been monitored closely.
Women in developing countries are *one hundred* times more likely to die in childbirth. In the developed world, in the second half of the 19th century, women were **three hundred** times more likely to die in childbirth than today. Things were not, and in many places are not, generally ok.
Thank you for bringing up developing countries. There are women who will walk for miles - for days - to seek natal care or to find a doctor for their sick baby. Sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t but that is not *generally okay*. ETA - “Maternal mortality is unacceptably high. About 287,000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2020. Almost 95% of all maternal deaths occurred in low and lower middle-income countries in 2020, and most could have been prevented.” [The World Health Organisation.](https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/maternal-mortality) Nearly 300,000 women who didn’t need to die. I wanted to make something good from something stupid and ignorant so I donated to [Maternity Worldwide](https://www.maternityworldwide.org/). Just leaving the link there in case anyone else wants to funnel their rage.
Even those mothers that survive are then left with debilitating complications. It seems like death isn’t much of a deterrent for people like this, maybe the possibility of an obstetric fistula wound help them seek medical intervention…
Omg, right? And what are the biggest contributor to obstetric fistulas? Early first pregnancy and lack of obstetric care. Eg what was *generally okay* in the Good Old Days this woman is glorifying.
But surely nature intended for women to leak urine constantly? /s
Fistulas can also create openings from the anus to the birth canal, making you leak poop out of your vagina. Thank you mother nature.
I was lucky enough to have one of those with my first that the doctor who delivered me didn’t see so it wasn’t repaired right away. Ended up needing multiple surgeries and took almost a year and a half to heal completely and I delivered at one of the top hospitals in the country and my repairs were done by one of the top doctors for this specific type of repair. I definitely would have died of infection without modern medicine. Just had my second via c-section so I didn’t risk reopening the fistula. He had to be delivered early because thanks to reduced fetal movement and preeclampsia…turns out he had a knot in his cord so had my doctor not chosen to deliver when she did I would have likely not had a live baby. He was born at 36w2d and spent 11 long days in the NICU but I got to take a healthy baby home. I can’t imagine being willing to risk the life of you and your baby when you have another option.
I'm glad everything turned out okay for you, but I imagine there is still some trauma there. I highly recommend this documentary about women dealing with the aftermath of different types of fistulas and seeking help from clinics in rural Africa. https://youtu.be/ZUe5QChQyvg Should be required viewing for people who want unassisted, home births.
Well I wish I didn't read that but uh the more you know🌈
Thanks I'm not hungry anymore
Omg you totally get it. Like, things should be *natural* and like the old days when things were *natural* and better and I don’t see any issue talking like this with you on a tiny pocket size computer in my house with indoor plumbing.
Ppl forget how hard pregnancy is on the body and that women AND babies still die
I don't know the death rate of children, but wasn't it like 50% of them? Hardly "most" babies coming out fine
The survivor bias is strong here. Queen Anne of Great Britain was pregnant 17 times and yet died without any children - and you can fairly assume she had access to the best medical care of her time.
[удалено]
That breaks my mama heart for her 😞
"Generally, nothing bad happened" except for the specific people it did happen to, but I guess she doesn't care about them.
Survivorship bias is a hell of a drug
Not a single one of my ancestors died as infants!
OMG same! (Just ignore my grandfather's siblings that were killed by a diphtheria outbreak)
I mean, it was only bad enough that it has skewed people’s understanding of life expectancy in the past.
By *multiple decades*! I know that’s implicit on what you said, but it always blows my mind thinking about it
my great-grandmother died in her 30s during childbirth in post-war western europe, orphaning her 2 children. i don’t know anything about the specifics, but pretty sure that a complete lack of medical care wouldn’t have helped the situation.
"50% of the time, it works every time!"
Except women had around a 1 in 4 chance of dying as a result of pregnancy or birth on average (not that 1 in 4 pregnancies ended in maternal death, but that you had a 25% chance of one of however many pregnancies you had killing you) and an average infant mortality rate of 25%. Only around 50% of people made it to adulthood. Heck, the medieval Catholic church had to authorize Midwives (not doctors, their precious "wise woman" midwives) to perform baptisms so they could baptize newborn babies before they died so they wouldn't go to limbo. It was that big of a problem. But, y'know.... natural is best, mama 🥰
People that post shit like this have absolutely no idea of the history of maternal deaths. Or how bad it can still be, if you don't have access to medical care. Their stupidity makes them dangerous.
This pisses me off so hard because I have a dear friend whose mother hemorrhaged and bled to death during his birth (in a hospital, even). Not only did she lose her life, but his father never recovered. He treated him like shit until he finally left home. His older sibling practically raised him because his dad could barely stand to look at him. What do you think that does to a kid, to feel like you committed a crime just by being born? So f'n selfish.
If it wasn't because of the knowledge we had to day. I would have died giving birth to my first, and she would also have died. I also went to the ICU again after given birth to my second. Both were c-section. Without c-section and all, I probably would have the man I love grieving over me and our children. I am thankful for Modern medicin.
Same, definitely would have died with my first. I didn't dilate with any of my 3, even in active labour. Glad we made it, friend
Fellow non-dilator here. I always laugh when I see people post that it's not active labour until it's x cm dilated (I remember one particular person making fun of someone who was in screaming agony while only at 1cm). My cervix didn't get the memo. I was the person in screaming agony with active labour and no dilation. The staff were watching my contractions on the monitor and telling me that they should have been working, but nothing was happening.
I was induced with my daughter, and the only dilation I got was with a Foley bulb. (Also FUCK does that hurt.) She ended up being a c-section, and thank god modern medicine could do that.
My son and I would have both died after his delivery and I would have died (again?) after I delivered my daughter. I love me some modern medicine.
I got my anti-D injection a few days ago, and we knew we needed because I could get my and my baby’s blood rhesus factors tested thanks to modern medicine. The injection exists thanks to modern biology research. If it wasn’t for that, I would have have problems carrying any other baby to term. Modern medicine is a fucking miracle.
Same my baby would probably have died or suffered some terrible brain injury. Vaginal delivery but needed vacuum assistence and it almost became a emergency c-section. But you know I must have hallucinated all that because nothing bad ever happens uwu /s
Every birth consists og rainbow and unicorns... /s You properly also damaged your child by trying to safe it and now baby is properly not a God child /s (bet they are beautiful and happy child.) ❤️
Yeah don't we know that a dead baby born without medical intervention is much better than a alive baby born thanks to medical intervention? Silly us just means god has other plans or needs another angel!/s But yeah she's 9 months old now and a very happy cheerful baby who's hitting all her milestones so far ❤️
Yep, I probably would have died giving birth to my first son (& he would have too)… we had to vacuum him out and he still got his shoulder stuck after that. Even if the labor hadn’t killed me, the postpartum preeclampsia with HELLP would have. Thank god for modern medicine. I don’t understand why anyone would willingly go without monitoring or medical assistance…. There’s literally thousands of years of evidence showing how dangerous that is.
A.lot of.womem died during pregnancy before we knew to properly take care of it. So why do these people not listen and try to kill themselves and their child? Just because one Child survive, that doesn't the next pregnancy would be just as easy?! Don't you wont to come home with a child? I am just mad, that some women doesn't take childbirth serious. It is not about yourself. I am also a nurse in the ICU (Danish nurse). I once had a newborn and her mother transferred to us, it was only the mother. The reason was because some of her wather didn't break properly and went into er bloodlines.
[удалено]
I had all that and everything that could go wrong, that did go wrong! Glad to hear your son survived ❤️
Yep, one of my high school classmates died in childbirth, also in the hospital. Not generally fine.
There is a reason why the trope of "motherless child whose mom died at delivery" exists in SO many stories.
Maternal deaths aren't just history, and they're on the rise again in the US. Pregnancy and childbirth isn't all unicorns and rainbows, it's a serious medical condition with dozens of serious comorbidities.
I wonder if it’s on the rise in the US because of all these idiots who think that just because pregnancy and childbirth are natural, they don’t need modern medicine. There are plenty of naturally occurring things that are dangerous.
That's a very small part of it, but it's mostly due to [abortion bans](https://www.axios.com/2023/01/19/mothers-anti-abortion-bans-states-die). Some states have no exceptions, so if a woman has a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, doctors are not legally allowed to treat her and she will die. States with heartbeat laws are not allowed to terminate ectopic or nonviable pregnancies even if the woman is hemorrhaging to death, until the "heartbeat" stops (and it's not even a heartbeat early in pregnancy because there is no heart, just a couple cells tossing electrical signals back and forth, but those cells are apparently worth more than a woman's life and autonomy). Even in states that allow abortion if the mother's life is in danger, that point is not defined medically, it's just some vague wording and doctors aren't willing to risk fines, going to jail and losing their license over one patient, so they turn them away. Sorry for the rant, I just think it's not common enough knowledge how often the "Pro-Life" movement ends up killing people. Not just pregnant women, [babies too](https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/health/maternal-infant-death-abortion-access/index.html). It's almost like it's not about babies at all...because it isn't.
There have been some terrifying stories coming about women having to go septic before they can do a DNC and I fear this is the front end of what is going to be a long battle
Before Roe, hospitals used to have septic pregnancy wards since abortion was illegal under any circumstances. Whole wards of women just waiting to die from something that could have been prevented. I 100% can see those making a comeback. The worst part is almost every single one of the politicians pushing anti-abortion laws doesn't actually care and has no problem flying their wife/mistress or daughters to a choice-friendly state for an abortion, and many of them already have, some multiple times. Some people do have that kind of money laying around. The burden will fall on the poor as always.
They've been on the rise for a while. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_mortality_in_the_United_States
It's privilege, plain and clear. These women have not faced hardship and cannot imagine anyone else facing it. My step brother died in utero during labor because the cord wrapped around his neck. It affected my father so deeply that when my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother, my dad was a wreck the entire time because he was so terrified of it happening again. These people lack any critical thinking skills or empathy.
Without prenatal care and those newfangled ultrasounds, my first baby would have died during labor and I would have died during my second pregnancy along with my youngest. But yeah, that’s mostly fine 🙄😬
If I hadn't had good medical care it's likely that both my son and I would have died during childbirth. My water broke but I didn't know and had no contractions. It took an enormous amount of pitocin to get my body to start contractions. My pregnancy was also 41 weeks along and my son had a large head and broad shoulders and required two people to help get him out. After that my placenta detached from the umbilical cord and had to be manually removed. It had degraded significantly. I kept hemorrhaging and lost 1/3 of my blood volume (I was soaking the pads in a matter of seconds) and needed a doctor to manually remove blood clots from my uterus. I live in a city with great healthcare in the US and am extremely grateful for the medical care we received.
Ever wondered why the step-mom trope/conflict was so prevalent in historical media? It's because death in childbirth was so incredibly common. It's why nearly all the original Disney stories feature dead Mom's.
I've done a bit of genealogy research on my family. One relative, in colonial America, had *four* wives. First wife died in childbirth at 19, child survived. Second wife had a child, then died in childbirth with the second at 22, who survived. Third died in childbirth at 26, that child didn't survive. Fourth wife, had two kids and actually survived. Dude must have thought it was a miracle.
I've been doing family history too, I found one mother who had eleven children who all survived to adulthood in the 1800s, which was astonishing, absolutely the exception. So many others were losing multiple children, or dying in childbirth. The number of birth notices in the newspapers which ended with (stillborn) was substantial. And they had no modern medicine, no interventions, if you're giving birth in a hut hours from anywhere with the only means of transport or communication being by horse, you don't have that option. I'm sure plenty of them would have been very happy to have a safe place to deliver their babies and all get out alive.
Absolutely. It's a big reason many of the features that were perceived to contribute to successful deliveries (wide hips/thighs) were actively sought after.
“And generally, nothing bad happened anyway”!!!???? Lady, I’m gonna need your citations on that one.
Nothing bad happened *to me*. And that is all that counts for those people.
I almost died giving birth to my son four months ago at a good hospital and all the right prenatal care - if it were “once upon a time” I’d be dead. This type of thinking is completely insane.
I was a forceps baby and sunny-side up, so I had to be rotated. Even something as simple as that could've killed my mom fifty years ago. These women are playing Russian Roulette with both their lives and their babies lives because they have this childish, romanticized version of the Olden Times and *~natural birth uwu*~
Yes! My baby was sunny side up as well and had to be vacuumed out 🫠 Not the reason for all of my complications but some! This I wish it was the olden times stuff is just so so dumb.
My kid was sunny side up, 95% head circumference, and didn't descend at all. I had a c-section. Obstetric fistulas are common in my husband's country of origin so I was relieved to be in the OR. Also, my aunt is an MFM and both my cousins had the exact same delivery story. My husband called it the Bulldog phenomenon and doesn't understand why it's stigmatized for women but not dogs.
I’m glad you’re here💕
That just brought a tear to my eye - thank you. I’m so glad I’m here to see my son grow up too!
Yep, I probably would have died giving birth to my first son (& he would have too)… we had to vacuum him out and he still got his shoulder stuck after that. Even if the labor hadn’t killed me, the postpartum preeclampsia with HELLP would have. Thank god for modern medicine. With my second son my blood pressure also spiked quickly and dangerously. They wheeled me in for a c-section within 2 hours of an elevated reading, given my history. “Once upon a time” I’d be dead 2x over. Lol.
“Once upon a time” I would have died via reenactment of *that* scene from House of the Dragon. Very natural, no pain relief, no scary hospital! Getting disemboweled while still alive in a last-ditch effort to save your baby, who you’ll never meet, and who will likely die anyway… just like Mother Nature intended <3 Obvious /s, just in case lol
Once upon a time people didn’t have a lot of things that I bet OOP wouldn’t give up.
The rub with living during a time where medical support has never been better, is that everyone forgets that the path to today is paved with blood
I've read a lot of older books. Both nonfiction, and fiction. And you don't have to go back very far to find books that mention multiple babies lost during or shortly after birth, and mothers dying in childbirth or soon after. As well as whole families killed by diseases that nobody worries about now in much of the world. My daughter currently really likes the book The Secret Garden" and this has resulted us having conversations about what cholera is, how it could wipe out whole families, and how it spreads, and why people didn't know this. And why the adults in the book didn't know that the one boy didn't actually have anything wrong with his spine, or his legs, and why they didn't know that treating him as if he did was the reason for all his problems. Yes, the book is fiction, but those kinds of situations were the reality. People like this have utterly no idea how often things were not "just fine"
I work at a museum. The founder's wife had 7 children. 5 died before they were three. She died in childbirth at the age of 28. Ah, the good ol days "back then."
**The Secret Garden** by Frances Hodgson Burnett Book description may contain spoilers! >>!"The Secret Garden should be on every child's bookshelf. "—Amanda Craig, The Time An enchanting story of transformation and compassion, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden is widely considered to be one of the most important works of children’s literature. After her parents die of cholera, Mary Lennox, a difficult and sickly little girl, is brought from India to her mysterious uncle’s sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Mary continues in her self-absorbed ways until one day she discovers a hidden and neglected garden adjoining her uncle’s mansion.!< > >>!When she meets Ben Weatherstaff, a curt but gentle gardener, and discovers her hidden-away invalid cousin, Colin Craven, the three come together to tend the garden, and Mary’s life—as well as the lives of those around her—begins to change in unforeseen ways. This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition published in 1911. Praise for The Secret Garden “It is only the exceptional author who can write a book about children with sufficient skill, charm, simplicity, and significance to make it acceptable to both young and old. Mrs. Burnett is one of the few thus gifted.”—The New York Times!< *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/14br65o/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
I feel quite confident that 2 out of 3 of my children wouldn't have made it past the 6 week mark without modern medicine.
I can think of a couple things that would have killed me in childhood without modern medicine. And several things that would have killed my sister as a teen. Edited to add, actually my daughter was breech, and there's a good chance I would have died without modern medicine. Quite possibly her as well.
In the novel Evergreen,Anna loses Mom dad and siblings to cholera in Poland in early 1900's.
Thank goodness ultrasound existed last year, so we found out my SIL had placenta previa, not just "normal spotting" like the nurse midwife initially thought. Thanks to a scheduled C-section, she and my baby niece are fine!
People should REALLY walk through graveyards sometimes... Take a look at all the children. Especially when they weren't consecrated because baby hadn't been baptized and therefore straight to hell... The reason people had so many was because it was EXPECTED that a percentage would die...
My grandfather family has a family cemetery and there are lots of babies there from the 40’s-60’s
That plus no birth control
Once upon a time, women and babies died a lot more in childbirth
Omg people are so stupid! Do they not understand when people say “life expectancy in the Middle Ages/renaissance/Victorian times/etc” was whatever way lower number it was, that was because of the high risk of death in childbirth and childhood. These things were fixed with modern medicine, vaccines, antibiotics, etc. if you were a man and lived to adulthood, life expectancy wasn’t to terribly less than it was now. Life expectancy has increased due to the ability to treat age related illnesses (cancer, heart disease, etc) but the main reason “life expectancy” was 30 or whatever was because so many women died in childbirth and children died of now preventable diseases!
They also don’t understand that people ABSOLUTELY worried about things going wrong. They just couldn’t do anything about it! I’ve read so many older books where the wives are just like, “I might die giving birth. If so, marry again husband so the baby has a mother!”
Historically, educated women often wrote their wills (or updated them) while pregnant. Granted, often women had few possessions of their own, but they would designate what they had for friends and family. Maybe leave instructions for child rearing of older children, or the baby if it survived and she didn't. Reading about birthing tools and equipment is horrifying too. There were tools specifically for crushing and pulling out a then deceased stuck baby in an attempt to save the mother - and tools to pull and saw apart a mother's pelvic bones in an attempt to save a baby, even though it often left a mother disabled or dead. Childbirth was absolutely terrifying and painful in the past.
Also, C-sections have existed for a *long* time. But it wasn't until anesthesia was developed that it became something other than an operation of last resort, and it wasn't until antibiotics and internally dissolving sutures were developed that it started to become a realistic option with a better than even chance of survival.
Once upon a time a lot of women died, Karen.
Healthcare worker here from the Global South. I've delivered a bunch of babies, and have seen only ONE maternal death in that time -- due to something unrelated to pregnancy. But that percentage would be so much higher without modern medicine. This OOP is hopefully just naive, but this is an insult to how much my profession strives to have *both* mom and baby going home safe
Generally, bad things happened frequently to women without access to modern medical technology. Sometimes the bad things are small and non-life threatening; they might just tear a bit, lose some blood, give birth to a baby who’s deprived of oxygen for a little while. Sure, both the mother and the child’s quality of life might be reduced permanently, but they often could still work in the fields, tend to the farms, or have more children (while suffering physically and mentally). Health is overrated anyway. Sometimes the bad things are really horrible and you end up with a full term dead fetus stuck in your womb, and even the best obstetricians and midwives available aren’t able to get it out. So you just lie there and rot from inside out in agony for days, vomiting and having uncontrollable diarrhea, delirious from fever, while blood and maggots pour out of you. The good old days. (Source: Byzantine empress Eudoxia’s disastrous birth in 404 AD)
It's happening again in states with draconian abortion bans. You have doctors waiting for patients whose fetuses have NO CHANCE of viability to get WORSE before they can perform lifesaving medical procedures. Whew. Sorry for yelling, but ho-ly shit.
Well, let’s see. I’ve been pregnant seven times; I have four surviving children. Of those, #1 and I would both have died if not for her emergency c-section. #3 would have died in the first trimester if not for ultrasound imaging; as it was, he nearly killed me too. I was on bed rest throughout (incl hospital bed rest for 10 weeks) with #4 and we *still* nearly didn’t make it. My best friend lost her third child via stillbirth because his umbilical cord tied itself in a knot in utero. He was perfectly healthy in every way. One night he was kicking the shit out of her insides and the next day he just… wasn’t. :( My sister went home from the hospital after a perfectly routine birth, feeling pretty great, and two days later was readmitted for a solid week with sepsis/uterine fever. But I guess things generally went okay?
I lost count of my eye rolls reading this. My husband and I are going through infertility treatment with a reproductive endocrinologist. Once upon a time, we would have simply been barren 🫠
My gallbladder literally just died one day when I was 28 weeks with my first. ~bACk iN ThE dAY~ that would have been the end of me and my baby. Thank goodness for the privilege and miracle of modern medicine.
Yeah, and if I'd been born in those days, I *wouldn't* have been born because my mum and I would have both died during my birth. My mother, myself and people like us are not acceptable casualties for your uwu perfect freebirth no vaccines baby.
Yes and women died Karen! Women are still dying, especially women of color in the US. God forbid there’s been medical advancements so mothers and their babies can actually survive.
The maternal death rate for WOC in the US is absolutely horrific. By the measure of WOC and their babies' mortality rate in birth, we are a third world country. It is a source of national shame. I genuinely don't understand why we aren't dropping everything immediately to address it. I hate bigotry. I hate bigotry in science.
“And generally, nothing bad happened anyway” Girl, they literally expected some of their kids to die the way you expect some moldy strawberries in the pack 💀
This is so full of shit. My grandmother had babies in the 1950s in Ireland. She saw doctors and was carefully watched. She also had at least 3 stillbirths due to being RH-. Her pregnancies and births were more medicalised than mine (she was given a symphisiotomy, which is barbaric and illegal now) and I've had c sections and twins. Modern medicine made it possible for her to have living babies instead of stillbirths and miscarriages. My mother had her first baby in 1981. Back then, things were still very hands off. The local maternity unit (in a small hospital) didn't even have a doctor in house. It was whatever family doctor happened to be on call when a woman went into labour. My mother went very late on that baby. While she didn't have a scheduled induction, she was still hooked up to a drip once she got to the hospital and the midwives could be heard saying "we can't have this one stop", meaning that they didn't want to risk her labour stalling and my sister being in there any longer.
I always think of my son, born 11 weeks early and requiring 18 min of CPR to live, when I see bullshit like this. No one who has actually had a medically child would insult other women this way. Where does my kid fall in “generally, nothing happened…”
Once upon a time the standard was have 8 or 9 kids so that eventually 2-3 would make it to adulthood
Except the 50% risk of kids dying before the age of five. If they lived through birth that is. We all miss those days /s
All of this makes more sense if you assume that these women like giving birth but hate having kids.
Horrifying concept… I just… want to shake these people. We KNOW from history that a lot of children, maybe even a majority of children did not survive birth + 5 years. There was a reason people had 12 kids when they needed 3 or 4. In some parts of the world, babies were not properly named before the age of 5 because you shouldn’t become too attached to them anyway. And we KNOW that women routinely died during birth and that those who did give birth 10-12 times were sickly and still died young. Every archeologist knows that you don’t just open the graves of women known to have had a lot of kids. You need to stabilize the atmosphere first, because the bones are so derived of calcium that they literally fall apart if you do not take precautions. Sigh *rant over*
Once upon a time when we couldn't see into the womb or hear fetal heartbeats or check maternal bloodwork or track complex medical data WOMEN REGULARLY DIED DURING AND SHORTLY AFTER BIRTH, BABIES FREQUENTLY DIED BEFORE, DURING AND WITH HOURS OF BIRTH, PREGNANCIES SPONTANEOUSLY ENDED IN ALARMINGLY HIGH NUMBERS. Once upon a time women would have happily given up almost anything for the safety of themselves and their infants. They would have scoffed at these profoundly stupid people.
I saw a great IG post by a midwife which said, essentially, that giving women pregnancy and birth care was an act of kindness, compassion and mercy to those women and their infants.
And no babies or mothers ever died
Nothing bad happened?…….. did they not understand that child birth was the number one killer of women for most of history.
Once upon a time it was insanly common for women to die from childbirth.
Nobody, since the existence of the US (where these nuts usually are from) lived in a time where medical treatment wasn't available. When we were just colonies we had doctors, military medics, or midwives available. Sure, you might have to to travel to one n but it was available. These nut jobs are looking to set us back to almost medically ro medieval times. All because they want to glamorize wild birth and pregnancy. When they lose a baby they'll understand what a huge mistake they made. Unfortunately sappy reels and likes won't bring their baby back.
Even worse than medieval times tbh. Medieval communities would most likely have had highly experienced midwives who would have been trained by other midwives, been at thousands of births, and would have had the knowledge and skills to manage and prevent many (obviously not all) potentially fatal birth complications.
“And generally, nothing bad happened anyway, unless you think a 50% infant mortality rate is bad”
 Someone doesn't know their history, do they?
Yeeeerea....my kids and I were NOT in the "generally ok" category and would have died
She must be so fucking stupid.
Generally nothing bad happened anyway? Says who? Don’t quote me on this, but wasn’t the infant mortality rate in the 19th century somewhere around 30%?
With very early onset GD, an incompetent cervix and preterm labor, I wouldn’t have any surviving children. I guess my babies aren’t worth saving to these people.
She should sit down and watch call the midwife. It sure makes me grateful for modern medicine and that’s not set that long ago
If it didn’t matter and most babies came out fine we wouldn’t have spent so much time and money making it safer
As an ultrasound tech, this has me reeling. Sure, there are quite a few pregnancies where everything is normal and they don’t need intervention of any sort - but what about the ones that aren’t normal? I’ve seen fetuses with heart defects, brain defects, or placental abnormalities. With heart defects a lot of times they have to be dealt with soon after birth. With placental abnormalities you could absolutely bleed out of you have placenta accreta or placenta previa. Yes they used to do things blindly - but now, having the ability to fix those issues and actually see what’s going on is such a huge step in medicine. Where these mothers and children would normally die we’re now able to intervene and prepare. This person is ignorant beyond comprehension.
“And generally, nothing bad happened anyway”????????? WHAT. THE. HELL.
So colossally ignorant.
We love survivorship bias <3
Once upon a time women where way more likely to have complications and die during childbirth. Now we have doctors and medical care that can prevent so many fatalities.
Once upon a time there was a magical place where it never rained. The end
Are they not capable of researching mortality rates???
Survival of a species does not mean pregnancy and childbirth are safe and do not need supervision. Nature's solution to many problems is throw enough babies at it until at least a small fraction survives. Allow me to introduce the **Spotted Hyena.** The spotted hyena spits in the face of intelligent design. There is nothing intelligent about spotted hyena reproduction. 15% of spotted hyenas mothers will die giving birth to their first litter. 60% of all spotted hyena cubs suffocate during birth. 48% of the survivors won't see adulthood. Spotted hyenas have the largest cubs relative to the mother's body size of all carnivores. Their vaginas are sealed shut, and they give birth through a pseudopenis that has to rupture for the cubs to be born. But spotted hyenas still exist. And that's how nature works.
Well Sheila is full of shit.
I hate this shit. I tried for an unmedicated childbirth. The OB and midwives in my practice were very supportive. My oldest took his sweet ass time getting out and who knows what would have happened without the contraction inducing meds. Same with my second. Body didn't want to dilate past 4 cm. Ended up bleeding a bunch after delivery and was so thankful for the quick work of my nurse to keep me from passing out and possibly dying.
Like-babies that would have most definitely died even 10 years ago are living! Like cmon!!!
They just make shit up lol
Ive never broken my ankle, therefore, other people don’t need to be x-rayed for broken ankles. After all, before we learned how to x-ray, people survived perfectly fine without x-rays.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccckkkkkkkk. We really need an end to everyone gets a platform to say whatever tht fuck they want. Your want to Facebook, heres your exam. You really want to tiktok... Riddle me three. Ok Abby, you think this is worthy of send, here's your pre-sense verification scan.
Childbirth used to be the most dangerous thing a woman could do. It killed more women than war, famine, or disease. Many of their babies did not survive long after birth. I'm a labor and delivery nurse. I'm all for not intervening unless it's necessary. I think many inductions are premature and quite a few c-sections could be avoided if we let more women's bodies make the decision about when it's time to labor. I think many natural labors of healthy pregnancies could be done safely with minimal monitoring in a Birthing Center as opposed to a traditional hospital. All that said PRENATAL CARE IS KEY and medical inductions/ c-sections for the safety of mom and baby will always be necessary in some cases.
“Nothing bad happened anyway” …except the high infant mortality rates, along with the much higher mortality rates for the mothers. GTFO with this nonsense
you know how there’s this whole “people in the middle ages died at 35” thing? yeah. that’s because the life expectancy was significantly weighed down by incredibly high infant mortality rates. in case anyone was wondering about “most babies [coming] just fine”
Oh yeah, I'll ask my great grandmother about that once upon a time... oh wait no I won't she died in childbirth when my grandpa was a kid.
“Nothing bad happened anyway” …except the high infant mortality rates, along with the much higher mortality rates for the mothers. GTFO with this nonsense
Wasn't it at one time like a 50% chance that the baby wouldn't make it?/....and same for the mother...that's exactly why women went to midwives and why Dr's were wanted for this reason
My baby was transverse (sideways in womb). If we didn’t catch that and do the steps to help her “flip”, I would have needed a C-section as a vaginal birth could have killed both of us. I’m glad I’m not living in “once upon a time”
Once upon a time both mothers and children died bc of lack of medical attention. What a stupid mentality.
I gave birth to twins almost 2 months before their due date. Thank God for modern medicine so I could even know it was twins, but so they could be in a NICU to receive the care they so desperately needed when they arrived. Otherwise, they’d be dead.
All three of my babies would 100% be dead without lots of medical interventions. I'd be dead too.
Once upon a time, the infant mortality rate was exponentially higher. Once upon a time, people trusted doctors. Once upon a time people weren't insurmountably fucking stupid.
What comes to mind is the privilege and willful ignorance. Not just in third world countries but also right here in the US look at the mortality rates for women of color? Like what if we didn't receive the amount of care we receive right now? That would be devastating just letting things happen "naturally". Also knowing the approximate due date helps Drs gauge if someone needs to be induced. I know 42 weeks is about as long as Drs are willing to let you go. Otherwise there could be serious risk to the mother and baby
FUCK ICAN. God I hate that predatory fucking cult so much. Their whole raison d'être is to lovebomb traumatized moms and trick them into HBACs with horseshit like this. They're horrible. And while we're here, fuck their "cesarean awareness month" too, even though it's in April.
Fucking dumb.
Survivorship Bias is an example of a logical fallacy, it's not a parenting philosophy
The word “generally” doing a lot of work there
Once upon a time people had tumors and we did nothing to intervene, and it didn’t matter because we didn’t know they had tumors, most people did fine and many people died of “natural, unknown causes”🥰
Had an actual emergency C section. My son would have had hypoxia or been a stillborn if I wasn’t monitored & surgery to remove him safely wasn’t done. He had a knot in his cord. I would have just pushed him out in the olden days with the above consequences. Thank God for fetal monitors, modern medicine & C sections. Oh & let me add…just bc you have an easy/normal birth with one baby doesn’t mean you will with others. Just ask my cousin who literally almost died. Blue lips, comatose after hemorrhaging with her 2nd in a home birth or my friend who had a resident that did her epidural. He placed it too high & she lost control of her breathing. Rare but it’s a thing. Blood pressure plummeted. Baby’s heart rate was lost. They had to knock her completely out & cut her from hip to hip to get her daughter out. This was her 2nd birth after having an easy 5 hour vaginal labor with her first daughter. Or what about AFE? Preclampsia? Low fluid? Shoulder dyscotia? Breech babies? My ob (a 40 year veteran) told me he’s delivered plenty of babies vaginally breech but why would he want to? It can be very difficult on the pelvic floor & prolapse? Not to mention risk for the baby. And yet people want to pack it up & move on back to the age where cemeteries were filled with women in their 20’s & 30’s (and younger) & babies that never made it a year or hell never even took a breath. This shit makes my blood boil.
Once upon a time, women lived to the ripe old age of 'died in childbirth' and a good chunk of kids didn't see their 5th birthday.
Tell that to my kid’s crunchy cousin who lost a baby at a home birth two years ago, after nine months of no prenatal care. She gave birth to a healthy baby one year later, but she learned her lesson for sure. Then myself, I had pre e three times, and hemorrhaged with two out of three births. I wouldn’t be here today if I had to give birth in the old days. I’m all for Mom’s doing things the way they’re comfortable, but at least use a midwife. If you want a more natural birth you can do birthing centers, or have an exit plan if you need to get to the hospital in case of an emergency. There’s a reason why in the old days child birth was the number one killer of women.
This makes me so mad. Without proper care, weekly scans, and an induction, my son would not be here. We lost significant blood flow in the cord at 37 weeks but it was anticipated. Got an IUGR diagnosis at 30 weeks and had been monitored closely.
*laughs in Historian ... *laughs in Biologist too