Childbirth Through The Years
By danotoyou2
January 31, 2008
A woman who’s had a child in every decade since the seventies, talks about how childbirth has changed through the years.
I’d heard some of this from my mother, who had her first in the sixties, and her last in the eighties. What a world of difference it was for her to from being a young girl treated like a shameful waste, to having a wonderful labor and birth through Lamaze. How different it must have been back in those days, when pain relief wasn’t given, not because they used breathing, water or hypnosis to cope with pain, but because “they needed to be taught a lesson.”
Midwife Katherine Hales, 46, has given birth in every decade since the Seventies and has seven children: Lindsay, 29, Christopher, 27, Stephen, 24, Jonathan, 22, Ralph, nine, Imogen, five, and Hamish, three.
When I went into labour, I was prepared with a hot bath, enema and what can only be described as a full Brazilian. I was given a huge shot of the painkiller Pethidine and told that walking around was forbidden - I was to remain in bed at all costs. Unfortunately, the pain relief didn’t work.
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