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From a granny vantage point, not a trained one, I think it takes the salt and sugar out of the blood, and if women were given honey and salt to replace it, it might take care of some of those after birth blues, you know the ones we hear about and sometimes leads to drowning all your kids, cause you can’t handle it all.

I had my second child at home with a midwife to deliver her. The midwife was an older lady who came out of the depression. After giving birth I also apprenticed with her as a midwife for a couple of years. She had strict rules about birth. Moms were to be fed meals of their choosing after giving birth for 2 weeks. Dads were to see that their wives did not have to jump right back to strenuous physical activity. She encouraged supplements before and after birth and lots of fruits and electrolytes. But, your body will always tell you what it needs if you let it. So she preached that new moms should always eat what they hungered for.

I always laugh about hospital birth stories. My daughter was born at home at 6:09AM on June 12. Then my midwife fixed me a big breakfast of sausage and homemade buttermilk biscuits with sliced fresh tomatoes. She went to my garden and picked the tomatoes for me. She put my dirty linens from the birth in the washer, picked the plums that were ripe off my tree for me because I was worried about them, blanched them, dropped them in the deep freeze, got my sheets out of the wash and hung them to dry and by that time my Grama and mom had arrived. She told them I needed to drink Gatorade that day (she knew I liked it) and that I should be given anything in the world to eat that I thought I was hungry for. Said my body would know what it needed. Then, she went home.

Experience was a lot different with my first daughter in the hospital. Given that there are no problems I'd recommend childbearing at home to anyone.

That sounds so much more loving than the cold, sterile hospital where I had my son. And I don't mean just the hygienics. The nurses were rude, as was the doctor. And they woke up me in the night to take vital signs, then charged me $5 for one Tylenol. And wondered why I insisted on going home early!

electrolytes.<<<

That is the word that I could not remember, and the reason for the honey and salt.

It is truly the real reason that women have so many problems giving birth, in my opinion, I do know that it worked with my goats.

I too fed them extra, but not milk making foods, until after the birth is over.

A local Indian man, told me that his family always fed them the mistletoe that grows on the trees in the desert, not a lot, maybe a pint to a quart of it, they will leave what they do not want.

It is a good laxative for them.

Your Midwife, sounds like she liked what she did and I am so glad you had her with you.

It is true, our bodies will tell us what it needs.

I have noticed that I want raisins in the early spring and when it is real hot in the summer, I want citrus.

Two things that are not really favorites.