Modern day childbirth in the Western world typically takes place in a hospital with doctors and midwives on hand. But our female forebears experienced labour very differently, often surrounded by the women closest to them in a setting that more closely resembled a social occasion than a medical procedure. From cheese and charms to the contraband birthing girdle, here we explore some of the ways babies have entered the world over the centuries.
Let them eat groaning cake
Though perhaps the last thing on a labouring mother’s mind, serving food and drink during childbirth was exceptionally common in the 1700s, according to Sarah Fox, author of Giving Birth in Eighteenth Century England. Both were considered sources of strength and medicine at a time when mothers needed them most and, immediately afterwards and in the weeks that followed, a way to bring people together to celebrate.
Caudle – a hot drink made of gruel mixed with wine or ale and sweetened or spiced – was particularly associated with childbirth itself, wrote Fox. It was generally prepared over the fire in the birthing chamber and served a dual function – as nourishment for the mother in the throes of labour and an enjoyable tipple for those who attended her.
The aptly-named groaning cake, meanwhile, was usually enjoyed shortly after the baby was born. Believed to be similar to gingerbread, British folklorist John Brand wrote that those present at the birth ate the centre of the cake, friends and neighbours who visited during the lying-in period were served outwards of the centre, and the final pieces were given to those in the wider community who attended the christening.
In some regions, groaning cake was swapped for cheese, according to Brand’s book, Observations on Popular Antiquities. In the north of England, young women were thought to have put slices of groaning cheese under their pillows in the hope they’d dream of future children. At christenings in Oxford, meanwhile, it was “customary… to cut… the Cheese in the Middle when the Child is born, and so by degrees, form with it a large Kind of Ring, through which the Child is passed on the Christening Day”.
The role of food and drink in childbirth seemingly didn’t end with passing a baby through a hoop of cheese. In William E. Horner’s The Home Book of Health and Medicine, he advised using common ingredients to soothe areas made painful by the “great stretching of the parts”.
“[Labour] occasions great soreness, and uneasy feelings, which are best removed by bathing with warm milk and water,” he observed on p442. “If there be much swelling, an emollient poultice of bread and milk, or linseed meal may be applied.”
Strange as his prescription might sound by today’s medical standards, one rather hopes his methods were successful since his back-up plan was to use leeches.
Gather your gossip and charms
Childbirth was for centuries a social event attended by a group of female relatives, friends and neighbours known as the “gossip”, according to the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSE).
Its role was to prepare the birthing chamber, make the caudle and guide the expectant mother through labour. The first use of gossip as a verb describing the act of assisting in childbirth can be found in Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well, according to a paper published by the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada.
But their contribution to welcoming babies into the world has been recorded throughout history, wrote Fox. At first, “gossip” was an affectionate term noted mostly in personal letters but throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, it became increasingly associated with idle talk and the subject of satirical essays that painted the gossip as lewd drunks, she added.
Regardless, it remained associated with female sociability and particularly the birthing chamber, where the gossip not only provided practical help but bore witness to folklore and customs. For example, placing a coin in a newborn's hand, a practice known as “handselling”, was common and thought to bring great wealth in later life, according to Visit Scotland. Giving a newborn a silver rattle with coral, meanwhile, was thought to protect it from disease, said the RCSE.
Baby's first superstitions
Superstitions were also closely observed by midwives who took on responsibility for adhering to them, it added. One such tradition involved the midwife sprinkling the labouring woman with urine to ward off fairies, a process both women undoubtedly enjoyed much less than eating cake.
Others ensured the first food to pass an infant’s lips was a spoonful of butter and sugar to give it “a sweet nature”, according to the Dictionary of English Folklore. Some believed that immediately after the birth they should carry the baby to a higher storey of the house – or at the very least, climb on to a stool – to ensure it “rose in life”.
Outside of midwifery, wetting the baby’s head was another well-observed custom, though the choice of liquor varied regionally. In Cumberland (now Cumbria), the baby’s head was washed with rum for luck; in Suffolk it was gin. Until the baby was a year old, two further rules were commonly observed by the superstitious: never to cut its nails with scissors lest it grow up a thief, and never to let it look in a mirror or it would become conceited.
Belief, luck and safety
Adjacent to charms gifted to newborns were the talismans worn by pregnant and labouring women to bring luck and safety.
Eaglestones, for example, were egg-shaped amulets filled with sand or pebbles dating back to the 13th century. Worn around the neck or arm by a pregnant woman, they were thought to “act like a magnet to hold the foetus in place and prevent miscarriage”, according to the folklore dictionary. Tied around her thigh during birth they were thought to hasten delivery, so much so they had to be removed quickly to avoid bleeding or prolapse, it warned.
It’s unlikely they did cause such outcomes but expectant mothers have throughout history hedged their bets when it comes to childbirth – and with good reason. During the Middle Ages, neonatal mortality rates for mother and child together are estimated to have been 30 to 60%, according to the University of Cambridge.
It’s perhaps no wonder that women between the 12th and 16th centuries turned to birthing girdles, loaned out by monasteries and inscribed with prayers and holy names, for spiritual protection. They were so popular that despite most being destroyed during Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, many women continued to wear the surviving contraband girdles into the 17th century.
And who can blame them? As one study put it, “girdles were part of the armoury of domestic medicine employed by women”. Long before childbirth became medicalised, it was a life-or-death battle rooted in community, belief and celebration. Rituals like eating only certain letters from a medieval mantra spelled out in cheese and butter might sound bizarre to contemporary readers. But they’re a reminder that while the methods and traditions around labour and pregnancy have changed, the hope for a healthy mother and baby at the end of it has not.