I’ve been doing genealogy, and finding that in the past, a lot of the families with 20-something kids had different moms. Some just didn’t make it. And dad started over with a new wife and had more kids. I wonder if some of those men didn’t need midlife crises since they were going to get a new young bride soon enough anyway.
I think you are correct about that. Childbirth did not always turn out to be a happy experience. My paternal grandmother died as a complication of childbirth and the child died as well. From the stories about the event that I was told by relatives who were present, it seems to have been some form of coagulopathy, like DIC(Disseminated intravascular coagulation).
I have several ancestors whose first (and some even second wife) died and they remarried younger women.