Pregnancy And Childbirth, The 1800 's Vs. Now

Motherhood was an expected part of the wife’s life. Woman would have a large number of babies right after each other although some babies would not survive. “High mortality rates must have overshadowed the experience of motherhood in ways difficult to

Giving birth to a baby is the most amazing and miraculous experiences for parents and their loved ones. Every woman’s birth story is different and full of joy. Furthermore, the process from the moment a woman knows that she’s pregnant to being in the delivering room is very critical to both her and the newborn baby. Prenatal care is extremely important and it can impact greatly the quality of life of the baby. In this paper, the topic of giving birth will be discussed thoroughly by describing the stories of two mothers who gave birth in different decades and see how their prenatal cares are different from each other with correlation of the advancement of modern medicine between four decades.

When Sarah was out of the bed and standing her whole attitude changed, she was more comfortable and relaxed. Sarah went on to give birth on her hands and knees, there were no complications and the perineum was intact. The student felt that through the use of different positions, listening and observing, she had empowered Sarah to have a normal birth. The two specific topics the author will analyse are positions in labour and the role the midwife plays in facilitating choice.

The paper introduces a sophisticated analysis of the maternity-related issues as well as childbearing policies in the USA. The American documentary “Born in the USA” serves as a material for the study. It is the first public television documentary to provide an in-depth look at childbirth in America. It offers a fascinating overview of birthing, beginning with the early days of our country when almost everyone knew of mothers or babies who died in childbirth. As medicine advanced, maternal and infant mortality rates dropped radically. Hospitals were soon promoted as the safe, modern way to have a baby. The film reveals some crucial specifications of pregnancy, giving birth to a child and raising an offspring in the United States. Specifically, it verifies a general assumption, according to which American obstetricians possess a worldwide recognition, due to their proficiency (Wagner, 2008, p. 4). Moreover, the paper reviews such issues as pregnancy

Margaret saw first hand the devastation of infant, child and maternal mortality while serving as a visiting nurse in the poverty stricken lower east side of New York City.  This mortality resulted from the culmination of self-induced or illegal abortions that ultimately ended up in infection, causing death to partakers.  Margaret saw a need in society for education on the topic of birth control to prevent such mortality.

In the mid 1930’s childbirth was extremely dangerous and high percentages of women and their babies died sooner or later after birth. As people took notice, medicine took a lot of steps to lower the mortality rates. A lot of deliveries moved from the homes of people to the hospitals with more safer conditions of birth. Throughout the years, hosptials worked on getting their public sanitation, public nutrition and better control of some deadly chronic diseases. By the 1940s medicines surgical techniques and antibodies improved so much that it made the hospital that much more safer for people to deliver children. Medical Doctor, Elizabeth Eden, stated “By the 1950s, routine maternity care, originally designed to improve safety, had become almost too rigid. For example, the fear of infection, a major killer of mothers and babies, led to such practices as taking away all a woman's personal belongings when she entered the hospital; administering large, uncomfortable enemas; prohibiting fathers and other loved ones from entering the maternity area; keeping babies in nurseries, away from their mothers; and handling babies as little as possible. At the time, bottle-feeding was believed to be more sanitary and superior in almost every way to breast-feeding.” Medical Doctor, Elizabeth Eden also stated “The 1960s was a time when national and international organizations were founded to

“Before you can cultivate a garden, you must know something about gardening.” This quote is from Margaret Sanger’s “The Children’s Era” speech given in 1925. Sanger believed that nurturing children is an art and has to be done properly in order for the children to be successful. In this illuminating speech, Margaret Sanger illustrated the lack of birth control options and overpopulation of unwanted children in order to persuade the people of New York, along with the Chairman, that it is time for a change when relating to women’s rights and children. Upon closer examination of this speech, Sanger used analogies, alliterations and focused on the children all while appealing to her knowledge along with the emotional and logical side to present her case about children being brought into the world unwanted, and that women should be in complete control of childbearing.

Abigail Goodman, a forty one year old mother and professor at Hilden University, finds herself pregnant for a third time. She believes that abortion is the best option for her case so she decides to terminate one of her own. A few weeks later, She goes on trial and although abortion is legal, she finds herself fighting. Abigail is arrested and is held under a law that makes abortion an offense. In the trial that follows she finds herself fighting for her right to abortion. The book addresses that Abigail goodman was “accused of murder”(Fast 1) for slaughtering her own baby and in many real cases we can seen as the same. Many times, the pro choice army has argued that abortion is murder or slaughter evidently supported by the fact that there are brain waves at 3 weeks and that life does begin at conception. (Source 5) the supporters of life Abigail was found in violation of sections 156 and 157 (Fast 8) which resulted in her arrest. Many may argue that “Women are denied rights that are given to men” (Fast 58) but this is not true. However, the act of abortion is taught as a movement against the feminist revolution with deep economic roots, demonstrating a reason for the major support of the practice (Fast 57). Abigail continues to argue that if men were capable of conception, there would be no argument of choice. There no privacy. (Fast

For hundred of years, women have wrestled with their womanhood, bodies, and what it means to be a woman in our society. Being a woman comes with a wonderful and empowering responsibility--giving birth. What sets us aside from other countries is that the process and expectations of giving birth has changed in our society; coming from midwifery, as it has always been since the early times, to hospitals where it is now expected to give birth at. Midwifery was a common practice in delivering babies in

I could smell the strong fruity scent of the middle-aged woman’s perfume as a slight breeze pasted through the shrubbery on the sidewalk. I could see her slender silhouette walking my way and a small glitter of hope in her eyes. She asked if they could talk to me for a minute I smiled and told her that’s exactly what I had in mind. I informed both the man and woman that I was there to actually observe and interview abortion protesters. I did not fully understand if they were making a change and wanted a firsthand experience. They agreed to help me in any way they could.

Does everybody think or feels the same about childbirth around the world? This question above is a question that has always been in my mind. Now that I got the opportunity of choosing a topic to do research. I decided to choose childbirth and culture. This research paper is going to talk about how different cultures and countries look a birth in an entirely different manner. Some look at birth as a battle and others as a struggle. And on some occasions, the pregnant mother could be known as unclean or in other places where the placenta is belief to be a guardian angel. These beliefs could be strange for us but for the culture in which this is being practiced is natural and a tradition. I am going to be introducing natural and c-section childbirth. And, the place of childbirth is going to be a topic in this essay. America is one country included in this research paper.

Reading descriptions in medical texts, Martin wondered how male-oriented views from textbooks matched so cohesively with those of the interviewees. After some research, Martin realized the thought process of woman during labor matched the text book definitions due the definitions men witnessed during childbirth and illustrated in text books and woman culturally internalized and learned through ideology as a description of contractions vs. giving birth.

“The Mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a moving poem that centers around the realities of having an abortion. If read closely, it can be understood in a many ways. A Marxist critic, for example, would see it as a mother who chose to have an abortion after the realization that she is not of a class or financial situation to have a child. A psychoanalyst, on the other hand, might see a woman who is using defence mechanisms to rationalize her choice. Two new ways to analyze this poem are through the theories of structuralism and deconstruction.

In the twenty-first century the thought of a child coming into the world is often a pleasant one with little worry in mind. However, in the 1800’s this was likely not the case. The chances of death for the mother-to-be greatly exceed the maternal mortality rates of the modern era. In fact, the odds of a birthing mother perishing in childbirth were so high that “… in some 19th-century American lying-in hospitals, the mortality rate approached nearly 700 out of every 10,000 births…” (Borst). With this statistic in mind, there should be little surprise that Cherokee Sal from Bret Harte’s short story, Luck of Roaring Camp, died within an hour of birthing her son (Harte). Her manner of death portrays the ugly reality of not only the time period,

According to a 2015 estimate by the CIA, the maternal mortality rate today is only 14 deaths per 100,000 live births (“World Factbook”). In other words, a mother has a 99.9986% chance of surviving childbirth—a risk so small and negligible. This was certainly not the case for the Puritans of early America, who did not enjoy access to the sanitation standards and medical technology of today. Considering that most Puritan mothers gave birth to as many as eight children, thereby multiplying their risk, one in eight of them died of “exhaustion, dehydration, infection, hemorrhage, or convulsions” (“Childbirth in Early America”). For many of these women, these deaths were not just possibilities; they became a reality—a source of apprehension and superstition during pregnancies. Anne Bradstreet, a notable Puritan poet, jeopardized her life by bearing eight children (Baym and Levine). Throughout the poem “Before the Birth of One of Her Children,” Anne Bradstreet plainly and honestly regards maternal fatality as a reality rather than a possibility through her acceptance of it as a means of physical agony and separation, her personal request to her husband to remember her as a virtuous person and to take care of her children, and the comfort she provides in her supposedly last words.