Twilight sleep
Well, no baby. Our scheduled inducement got pushed back because there were no beds available last night. So I'm heading into work today and we'll see when we end up going into the hospital.
Giving birth got me thinking about my grandma telling me about how she gave birth back in the early 1950s and I really never gave it a lot of thought before. I remember her telling me that she was totally passed out every time she gave birth. She didn't remember any of the labor and when she woke up she had a baby. I just read up on this today and it was called Twilight Sleep. It started back in the early 1900s and gained popularity until it fell out of practice in the late 1950s. The drugs morphine and scopolamine were combined to produce Twilight Sleep. Once women started labor they were given this drug and you can only imagine what ensued afterward as their bodies continued to go through the process of labor without the control that they would normally have. In some cases, women were strapped to beds or put in straight jackets to keep them from falling out of the bed. But, this was marketed as a miracle drug that eliminated all pain and remembrance of pain. There were also issues with the drug affecting the baby. And evidently, this is where the image of holding the baby upside down and slapping babies butt came into play trying to "wake" the baby up if the baby was incapacitated by the drug.
I'm glad we're past this stage of delivering babies, but it's scary how we got to where we currently are. Prior to Twilight Sleep, most births were at home. The idea of being more comfortable during birth is where the hospitals came into play and began being much more involved in giving birth.
Twilight Sleep wikipedia
Giving birth got me thinking about my grandma telling me about how she gave birth back in the early 1950s and I really never gave it a lot of thought before. I remember her telling me that she was totally passed out every time she gave birth. She didn't remember any of the labor and when she woke up she had a baby. I just read up on this today and it was called Twilight Sleep. It started back in the early 1900s and gained popularity until it fell out of practice in the late 1950s. The drugs morphine and scopolamine were combined to produce Twilight Sleep. Once women started labor they were given this drug and you can only imagine what ensued afterward as their bodies continued to go through the process of labor without the control that they would normally have. In some cases, women were strapped to beds or put in straight jackets to keep them from falling out of the bed. But, this was marketed as a miracle drug that eliminated all pain and remembrance of pain. There were also issues with the drug affecting the baby. And evidently, this is where the image of holding the baby upside down and slapping babies butt came into play trying to "wake" the baby up if the baby was incapacitated by the drug.
I'm glad we're past this stage of delivering babies, but it's scary how we got to where we currently are. Prior to Twilight Sleep, most births were at home. The idea of being more comfortable during birth is where the hospitals came into play and began being much more involved in giving birth.
Twilight Sleep wikipedia