Very much so, thanks for saying it. Without getting too graphic, everything was fine with our delivery right until the very end, when things got tore up real bad. I damn near passed out from seeing all of the bleeding. The OB had to immediately call in a team with another MD and about 5 other nurses. Had they not immediately sprung into action, I have no doubt that my wife would have been in serious danger. It was then that it really sunk into me why the mortality rate from childbirth was so high before modern medicine.
What you witnessed is very common and the reason, as you surmised, for former high mortality rates.
Literature from the fairy tales of the Middle Ages with all of its wicked stepmothers to American folklore is full of references to death by childbirth.
Hospital staff could do more to allow normal labor and delivery to proceed and save their scary lights and bossiness for the true emergencies.
Exactly. Well stated. We always hear how childbirth has been going on since the beginning of time, but what’s left out of that statement is the high mortality rate until recently/modern times.