Questions tagged [childbirth]
The childbirth tag has no usage guidance.
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What is the earliest known example of triplets?
I have just come across the case of a woman who had triplets (a boy and two girls) baptised in Edinburgh on 9th April 1709. How long they survived after this, I don't know, but they survived to ...
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How has mother/ child mortality evolved from pre industrial era?
I came across a surprising claim: that child and mother mortality was lower in pre industrial societies than in industrial ones.
I guess it might have some merit, if we compare pre industrial ...
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Was there the concept of paternity leave in Spain in 1913?
I have tried to google for info but can’t find any. As the question says, I am trying to find out if there was the concept of paternity leave in Spain during 1913 and, if so, how long for?
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What proportion of women died in childbirth before modern times?
I am researching the life of a woman whose mother died in 1615 when her daughter was aged four. I am wondering how likely it is that the mother died in childbirth.
Is there any general information on ...
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Who is the youngest monarch to have issue?
I came across a 14-year-old duke having a child in the 15th century with his wife, (formerly) Queen Isabella. The duke would end up with a son who became Louis XII, but that is just the back-story to ...
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Where did poor London women give birth in the latter half of the 19th century?
I have a personal reason for asking this question. I'm researching my family tree and I have some ancestors who lived in Mile End Old Town, London between 1850 and 1900, but gave birth in Mile End New ...
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Are there any medieval records of girls with large clitorises misidentified (and subsequently raised) as boys?
Several years ago, I read a piece of trivia in a popular science magazine1, which said pretty much exactly:
In the Middle Ages there were many cases where a newborn girl was born with a clitoris ...
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To prevent sex were men bound in bags or locked in beds?
I remember in the past, before marriage, a woman’s family would bind her man when he stayed with her in a sleeping bag or bed.
Essentially it would lock him into this bag/bed thing so he couldn’t ...
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When did western doctors first start predicting prenatal diseases and disabilities?
At what point did western medicine become invested in the idea of predicting that children might be born with specific illnesses or disabilities prior to their actual birth? And at what point did ...
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Who was the oldest woman that we know of to give birth in the Medieval Europe?
In 1166, Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II of England, gave birth to the future King John when she was at least 42 years old (it is more likely she was 43 or 44). Eleanor of Castile, wife of ...
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Queen Anne of England died without surviving issue despite 17 pregnancies. Did any other monarch try so hard to produce an heir without success?
Queen Anne (reigned 1702 – 14) had seventeen known pregnancies during her marriage to Prince George of Denmark (b.1653, d.1708) but she died without surviving issue. Only five of her pregnancies led ...
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Why did people have so many children in Victorian times?
I'm looking into my ancestry, and I found out that my great-great-grandfather, born in 1897, was one of fourteen children!
Now I know that even for the period this is a large number of children to ...
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Were pregnant women regarded as particularly attractive in 19th century Europe?
I have now read two books from the 1800s in which single young men flirt with married pregnant women. (The first was Anna Karenina, in which Veslovsky flirts with Kitty Levin. The second was ...
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Birth by Caesarean Section in Ancient Times
[I have asked a variation of this question already on the Judaism Stack Exchange, but am offering a broader version of it here.]
According to US National Library of Medicine, the first recorded ...
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