What Is A Hospital's Mortality Rates For Young Mothers?

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

She believed that men were at fault for her stillborn children and continued to use the same birthing techniques (Smith 65). For her eleventh pregnancy, she went to a hospital and had a doctor deliver the baby, and for the first time the child lived (Smith 438). Sissy’s abundance of stillbirths may be due to the fact that, “Women who’ve already had one stillbirth have a four times higher risk of having another stillbirth compared to women who’ve had a live birth” (Reinberg par 1). Along with stillbirths, there were also high numbers of infant mortalities in the early 1900s (Louis par 6). Doctors did not know the causes of stillbirths and instead focused on preventing infant mortality (Louis par 6). Due to the lack of knowledge concerning stillbirths, they were a common occurrence (Louis par 7). In 1909, about one hundred seven out every one thousand children died (Pryce par 1). Researchers now know that the leading causes of stillbirths and infant mortality and the turn of the twentieth century were poor environment, diet, and hygiene due to poverty (Pryce par 2). Sissy’s poverty and previous stillbirths provide evidence that Betty Smith accurately described infant mortality and stillbirth in the early twentieth century in A Tree Grows in

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.

Robin Yates’s paper, “Pregnancy and Childbirth, The 1800’s vs. Now: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting,” was filled with many clear points on the advancement of labor and medicine since the 1800s. This essay was filled with interesting and grabbing facts; however, the structure of the essay needs more support.

1837- The law started registering births, marriages and deaths and began to notice differences in areas. This was because of diseases going round and many people were dying. They wanted to figure out where about the illnesses were most common.

Angus McLaren, author of “Illegal Operations: Women, Doctors, and Abortion” demonstrates the life of an abortionist in the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s. McLaren explains a series of affairs in detail with many different abortionists. Since abortion was illegal at the time, many women consulted midwives, or took the procedure of abortion among themselves, this at times resulted in their death.

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

Pregnancy in the Southern United States during and before the 19th century was rife with difficulties. Particularly the humid Southern climate was quite hospitable for malaria and epidemics were not uncommon. Quinine was the medicine of choice for malaria at the time and was a known abortifacient and was the cause behind a lot of miscarriages, stillbirths, and infant deaths. In the 19th century as Americans placed emphasis on education and training, doctors, rather than midwives, assumed the leading role in labor and delivery for upper class women. In the South particularly, doctors preferred traditional “heroic” cures such as leeching, cupping, and purging which were followed because of the region’s devotion to time-honored practices.

During the nineteenth century Britain was facing a Public Health crisis and was in dire need of new sanitary reforms. There was a problem with Britain’s vast rise in population, diseases, housing conditions and governmental issues all being faced during this era. Living conditions through the nineteenth century was unimaginable (Clark, G. 2005). This was the era of the big industrial revolution.

Firstly, Ulrich tells a story of the role of a midwife in the eighteenth century America by explaining the types of medicines used, the frequent diseases, and the medical accomplishments of practitioners. Primarily, Ulrich makes it known that to care for the health and well-being of others was a woman’s obligation during this time. “It would be a serious misunderstanding to see Martha Ballard as a singular character, an unusual woman who somehow transcended the domestic sphere to become an acknowledged specialist” (62). Rather, Ulrich insists that Martha Ballard was a classic example of the majority of women in the early American Republic. Martha was a midwife, but also a wife and mother, which meant she had her “womanly” duties to pay attention to as

The health services in the 19th century consisted of self-employed doctors who were for the rich and charitable volunteers for the poor. Local authority hospitals catered for specific illnesses and health issues only, these included maternity and mental illness.

Thank you for your substantive analysis of the assigned material and your contribution to the discourse. I really enjoyed reading how you compared the views presented in the Birth House and the Dawn of Doctors. As you and Jennifer both cited, the lack of equality for women was certainly the central theme presented throughout each assigned text. Additionally, your statement that “doctors were not the same as midwives in the way that they did not take the time to care about the mother as a whole”, was also insightful and very true. Unfortunately, this practice continues to be present. Just as Parte was known for having “women deliver lying down in bed— as position that made his work easier— rather than on a birth stool, which made the

Research throughout history of patient care can be defined in many ways. On a broader spectrum World Health Organization (WHO) defines patient care, “as a good health system delivers quality services to all people, when and where they need them. The exact configuration of services varies from country to country, but in all cases requires a robust financing mechanism; a well-trained and adequately paid work force; reliable information on which to base decisions and policies; well-maintained facilities and logistics to deliver quality medicines and technologies.” (Organization,

In his article, "Why are so many U.S. women dying during childbirth?", Munz (2012) pointed out that U.S. is experiencing a rise in maternal mortality. It has doubled for the last 25 years and the experts are uncertain about the increase. Experts are not entirely clear for the rise in the maternal deaths in the U.S., but there are some aspects that may be link to this.

Although doctors were supposed to be considered medical experts, they were not taken seriously due to the fact that a patient had less than a fifty percent chance of benefiting from a doctor’s visit (“The 1920s: Medicine and Health: Overview”, n.p.). Doctors struggled to diagnose and fix medical problems due to inexperience and lack of tools (“The 1920s: Medicine and Health: Overview”, n.p.). As a result of the substandard medical community, maternal deaths and child deaths were commonplace, while simple sicknesses often turned into fatal infections (“The 1920s: Medicine and Health: Overview”, n.p.). When the first wave of the influenza pandemic struck in the spring of 1918, the medical community was taken aback by the pandemic’s unpredicted wrath (Peters, 13). The typically mellow influenza virus, characterized by familiar symptoms of fever, headache, fatigue, cough, sore throat, congestion, and body aches, claimed victims within hours (Peters, ix, 1-5). This was a sickness like no other, and it left the medical community baffled. Doctors nor medical experts knew what the sickness was, why it was spreading, what was causing it, or how to fix it (Peters, 1-5). All branches of the medical field practically shut down: researchers found no potential