Delivery, Then and Now
Posted by Danielle Bean in News on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 1:06 PM
I loved reading the recent news about a 92-year-old great grandma who helped to deliver her great-great-grand daughter, Reis McFarland. It was the first time the mother of five and grandmother of many had ever attended a birth.
Though I’ve never been one to invite the crowds into the delivery room when I have a baby, something about the idea of five generations being present to welcome this tiny baby girl makes me smile.
Even more interesting, though, is the idea of comparing modern birth experiences to the kinds of deliveries Great Great Grandma DeNeal had back in the thirties.
“DeNeal gave birth to her first baby in 1936, during the hottest July on record. There was no air conditioning at Lakeview Hospital and DeNeal was required to lie in bed for eight days straight.”
And the difference doesn’t end there. DeNeal didn’t know she was having twins before she delivered them and instructions for baby care were quite a bit different from modern day recommendations.
“Even when you took them home, they didn’t want you to hold the baby, you just put them in bed,” she said. “For the twins, we didn’t have two beds, of course, ready. It was very hot when I took them home, and I laid two pillows on the dining-room table and put them on the pillows. They slept in long clothes baskets for weeks.”
There is something in a woman that loves a good birth story, isn’t there? We just love to talk about these life altering experiences and compare our own experiences to that of others.
Years ago, Dan’s grandmother used to hold my babies and tell and re-tell the story of how she was born at the turn of the century. She was a twin, born prematurely, but her sister did not survive.
“They gave me whiskey with the white of an egg to strengthen me,” she used to tell me proudly. “And I made it!”
I think Grammy Bean likely survived in spite of the whiskey and egg white, but who knows? That early boost to her immune system got her through to the ripe old age of 98 before we lost her.
My favorite part about reading about 92-year-old DeNeal’s experience was that it confirmed for me that though many things change, it seems some parts of the birth experience will always remain the same.
“It’s God’s miracle,” DeNeal said. “They took her over to where they cleaned up and I stood right there and I thought, ‘How precious she is, right there, and just minutes ago she was inside her mama’ ... It’s just a miracle of God, that’s all it is.”
Amen.
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