Images of midwives sterilising medical instruments in a fireplace seldom come to mind when we think of giving birth nowadays. Instead, we imagine white coats, heart monitors, and hospital gowns. Yet, even into the late twentieth century, giving birth at home in the UK was often encouraged. Once again, as part of the ‘Birthing Stories’ project, I have been doing some digging into the selection of oral histories held by the George Marshall Medical Museum, which reveal how common home births were in the mid twentieth century. In this blog post, I shall be sharing some interesting home birthing stories from Worcestershire residents.
Birth was becoming more medicalised after 1950, but a lot of births were still at home. Even in the 1960s, 33% of women gave birth at home in the UK, in comparison to 0.9% between 1985 and 1988. Worcestershire resident Anne Smith had all of her children at home, with her first child born in 1958. Even after she suffered a miscarriage, a doctor at Ronkswood hospital still said she would be alright to give birth to her next baby at home:
“I said um, “I’d like to have this one at home if I may?” And er he said, “Well if… that what you’d like,” he said “I’m sure it’ll be alright.” So I had the next one with no problem you see so… and the next one after that (chuckles)”
The mindset of this doctor is certainly not unusual for the time. Indeed, Dr Jennings, a GP in Worcestershire, remarked that in the 1960s, there was no guarantee that a mother would be able to give birth in hospital:
“Even a firs-, mother having a first baby couldn’t be guaranteed to have a bed and be delivered in a hospital, unless she had adequate social grounds as to why it wasn’t fit for her to have it at home”
For some women, however, home births were very empowering. The mother could be surrounded by friends, family and a familiar atmosphere. Helen Shirley Brice tells us that she enjoyed giving birth at home in the mid-1960s, and preferred it to a hospital birth because she could quickly return to normality:
“Within about five or six days [of the birth] I was just walking around the house as though, you know, I was supposed to be there. Not like staying in hospital for ten days and coming home because that I think, staying in hospital, took a lot of confidence out of you […] I think this is one of the lovely things about having a baby at home because you’re amidst the whole family and again my husband was able to be at the birth”
Interestingly, fathers were not encouraged to be present for hospital births until the 1970s. A home birth could therefore be a preferred option for the mother, given that she could be joined by her partner. Indeed, birth traditionally has a very social emphasis (for more information, see Adrian Wilson, Ritual and Conflict: the Social Relations of Childbirth in Early Modern England, (London, 2016)). Historically, when a pregnant woman entered confinement, she would be joined by other women who would assist with the birth. A home birth thus seems to hark back to this tradition, with the mother being supported by loved ones.
Yet, there were inevitably risks associated with home births. Eileen Roberts became pregnant in the 1960s and was not allowed to give birth in hospital under the NHS because she had no problems during her pregnancy. She was, however, very scared to give birth at home because her mother had lost two babies in the past. So, she paid three times her husband’s salary to have her baby privately at South Bank hospital:
“And in those days, strange as it may seem you weren’t allowed to go into hospital to have your first child if there were no problems, you only went into hospital if you had problems. [..] I was rather concerned about this because my mother had lost two babies before I survived.”
From a professional standpoint, Dr David Lees remembers performing a lot of home deliveries. He remarks that giving birth at home could be wonderful, but that if things go wrong, it could be disastrous. In particular, he remembers being present for a delivery with one 40-watt bulb in the room.
“Things are unpredictable in obstetrics and I would hate to go back to er delivering babies in the home”
In Worcester, if something went wrong during a home birth, a ‘flying squad’ of consultants would be called to assist the midwife. Dr David Lees remembers that because there was no ambulance, all the obstetrics equipment went in the back of the consultant’s car:
“There was no dedicated ambulance or van even, it all had to go into the boot of the consultants car […] All the obstetric instruments, sterilised instruments, and erm the blood and fluids that were needed for intravenous use. Giving sets, the lot. So you knew this was going to take you half an hour to get to the patient and if you were on the other end and a woman was bleeding or she had a retained placenta or something you were absolutely terrified.”
Home births are still an option given to pregnant women. Nevertheless, home births today tend to be opted for by wealthier women who live in more comfortable homes, which could be why the mortality rates are now generally the same for home and hospital births. Yet, as is evident in the oral histories, until the late twentieth century, women were often not given the option to give birth in hospital. It could thus be said that women were not as well informed about the dangers of home births as mothers are today. Perhaps the conclusion here is that it is irrelevant if a woman opts to give birth at home, in hospital, or in a birthing centre. Instead, what matters is that she has been given all the options and information she needs and deserves.
- Molly Schoenfeld, Research Assistant for ‘Birthing Stories’ project