“Michele Savonarola” by Jane Beal

Michele Savonarola: His Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics for the Midwives and Mothers of Ferrara, Italy

EXCERPT:

Michele Savonarola was a court physician who served the house of Este in the fifteenth-century city-state of Ferrara, Italy, and was a prolific writer of Latin and Italian texts. About 1460, he composed his vernacular Italian manual bearing the Latin title, De regimine praegnantium et noviter natorum usque ad septennium, or Guide for Pregnant Women and Newborns up to the Seventh Year, which has recently been translated into English (Zuccolin and Marafioti). The Guide allows today’s English readers to learn more about midwifery, maternity, medical practice, and the realities of the childbearing year, including the care of the newborn, in early modern Italy.

Michele Savonarola often wrote in Latin, in order to reach an educated audience of male physicians and scholars, but he wrote his Guide in Italian in order to speak directly to women. He addresses his Guide to the “dear ladies of Ferrara,” calling them “my daughters,” thus presenting himself as a “good father” (p. 57): this is how he wanted the noblewomen of the court to regard him. He wrote the Guide in the vernacular for the sake of midwives, mothers, and their children, to whom the women had “bravely given birth” (p. 57). Throughout the text, he often directly addresses these women individually as frontosa, which refers etymologically to the forehead (“frons”) and can mean someone holding her head high and proud, and so being “brave” and “audacious” (p. 53). In so saying, he praises mothers and midwives for their boldness and he encourages women to recognize their own strength. He does not hesitate to criticize unhealthy practices or those who insist on them, but instead affirms the important role of women in caring for themselves and their children.

The Guide consists of three parts. The first part concerns conception; the second part, care during pregnancy and birth; and the third part, the upbringing of young children from their birth to the age of seven, with attention to the prevention, care, and healing of children’s illnesses and infirmities. The information presented in the Guide is not only medical, but also moral. It is presented to enable the ladies of Ferrara to become the “physical and spiritual healers” of their children (p. 59). As Gabriella Zuccolin says in the introduction to the new English translation, the work serves as “a guide to married life, an aid to women’s fertility, a prescription for the responsible management of birth, and a presentation of the best possible care of the newborn” (p. 15).

See: Savonarola, Michele. A Mother’s Manual for the Women of Ferrara: A Fifteenth-Century Guide to Pregnancy and Pediatrics. Ed. Gabriella Zuccolin and trans. Martin Marafioti. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, Vol. 89. New York and Toronto: Iter Press, 2022.

“The Spiritual Education of a Midwife” by Jane Beal

“The Spiritual Education of a Midwife,” Midwifery Today 145 (Spring 2023).

The Spiritual Education of a Midwife

EXCERPT:

“One of the best-known and well-respected textbooks on midwifery is Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery (1976, repr. 1980, 1990, 2003). It’s a collection of women’s birth stories, information about pregnancy and birth, and instructions to midwives about how to provide care throughout the childbearing year. The book helped to re-introduce homebirth and re-popularize midwifery care to a broader audience in the United States. Ina May emphasizes that giving birth is a spiritual experience, not just a scientific phenomenon, which implies that a midwife’s education must also be spiritual. In this essay, I will share stories from my own life-experience to illustrate the necessity and the advantage of spiritual education for midwives. For the journey of becoming a midwife can be a spiritual one … “

“To Induce or not to Induce? That is the Question” by Jane Beal

My essay, “To Induce or Not to Induce? That is the Question,” now appears in Midwifery Today 143 (Autumn 2022).

EXCERPT:

Risks of induction include low fetal heart due to adverse effects of medications, fetal distress, infection of the mother or baby, uterine hyperstimulation and possible amniotic fluid embolism (fortunately, rare), placental or uterine rupture, cesarean section, birth of a premature baby lacking proper lung development, and maternal hemorrhage (Mayo Clinic 2022; Goer and Romano 2012). These are serious risks that can lead to maternal and fetal morbidities and even mortality, though modern medicine fortunately has many ways of treating these complications when they arise.

However, given their seriousness, the risks ought to be significant enough to justify induction. Elective induction in a healthy woman poses unnecessary risks to the health of the mother and baby, and the mother ought to be informed of this so that induction will not be undertaken with false expectations of ease of delivery. All mothers, but especially first-time mothers, need fully informed consent about the benefits, risks, alternatives, and timing of induction.

“Narrative Medicine and the Renewal of Midwifery Practice in the 21st Century” by Jane Beal

My midwifery practice essay, “Narrative Medicine and the Renewal of Midwifery Practice in the 21st Century,” now appears in Midwifery Today 139 (Autumn 2021).

Excerpt:

Every birth comes with a birth story. All too often, the story is one of fear—even terror. Induction. Augmentation. Cesarean. Separation. NICU. As we well know, approximately one-third of babies in America are delivered by cesarean section (CS), which is major abdominal surgery. A good number of these c-sections are primary surgeries on first-time mothers who were brought to the operating room because of an unsuccessful induction of labor.

All too often, the process of induction causes pain and fear that double and re-double between mother and child. This happens not only in labor and birth, but afterwards, when the mother either cannot tell the birth story because she was so deeply traumatized—or because she can, and when she does, the child hears the story. The child then internalizes ideas like it was my fault that my mother suffered when I was born … birth is painful, birth is life-threatening, birth is bad … I don’t ever want to have a baby … if I do, I want an epidural/a scheduled cesarean/a way out, an escape….

Little does the child know that her mother’s story is one that her own body and brain remember subconsciously, at the level of emotion and sensory perception. If she ever does become pregnant, labor, and deliver a child, that original birth trauma will be right there waiting for her, unresolved. Either a good birth will help heal her or—and this is a frequent occurrence in mainstream hospital birth today—it will re-traumatize her, triggering her own birth experience, which she does not understand and has not processed. The trauma is then passed on experientially and epigenetically (Youssef et al. 2018) to her own child: three generations of trauma.

The future of midwifery is in breaking the cycle of trauma from one generation to the next. Part of the healing is in storytelling or, as recent medical terminology would put it, in “narrative medicine.” Narrative medicine involves highly valuing patients’ subjective understanding of their own experience. It involves health care practitioners in the fine art of listening and validating another’s story. The story is not just about the patient: it is meant to impact the doctor, the midwife, the nurse, the doula, the phlebotomist, the pediatric team, any medical caregiver, really, and to become a part of their story (Charon 2001). Within the narrative medicine framework, the patient’s story is allowed to, it is meant to, be integrated into the health caregiver’s thinking and practice.

“The Birth of St. John the Baptist” by Jane Beal

My ekphrastic essay, “The Birth of St. John the Baptist,” now appears in Midwifery Today 139 (Autumn 2021).

Excerpt:

At the Norton Simon Museum, as I contemplated “The Birth of St. John the Baptist,” I felt a certain level of amazement at the way Murillo chose to depict the birthing room. Encircled by a little glowing halo, the baby John is at the very center of the painting, but his elderly parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, are at the edge of it: the father standing and looking at his son, on the outside of a semi-circle of four women attending the baby, and, in the background, the mother lying down in bed as she is cared for in the immediate postpartum period by two maidservants. One of the two servants is offering her a white bowl on a plate, perhaps with a nourishing broth in it.

The woman holding the baby at the center of the painting appears to be a midwife who has just removed John from a shallow basin, where he has been bathed (calling to my mind the Leboyer bath), and she is swaddling him in white towels being handed to her by a younger nursemaid. The baby appears to look past the midwife, to meet his father’s gaze, as if to affirm the miracle of his own conception and birth to his parents in their old age. Over all of them, five cherubic angels look down on the scene from heaven, as if a curtain has been pulled back to reveal the golden light that streams into the shadowy room.

Murillo adds a homely detail to this divine scene: a little brown and white lap dog sits on a chair, beside a table covered with a burgundy cloth, on which is set a blue-and-white bowl on a blue-and-white plate. The dog appears as a symbol of loyalty. The colors blue and white suggest chastity and purity while the deep, wine-red color of the cloth suggests John the Baptist’s future martyrdom. For, as the gospel writers tell it, John was beheaded for rebuking Herod for divorcing his own wife to marry Herodias, his brother’s wife.

I admired how this Spanish artist of the Renaissance depicted the birth room of John the Baptist. I understood why the midwife, gently drying off the baby after his bath, was central to the scene: in a sense, she baptized the Baptizer. The artist’s decision to paint this holy baby emerging from his first bath was deliberate because it foreshadows John’s future vocation.

As a prophet, at the River Jordan, John baptized people who wanted to repent of their sins. He also baptized Jesus, his cousin, who people came to believe was the sinless savior of the world. The Gospels record, at the time John baptized Jesus, that the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove descended on Jesus and a voice from heaven said of Jesus, “This is my Son, whom I love; in him, I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

“Bridget “Biddy” Mason: A Black Pioneer Midwife of 19th C. Los Angeles” by Jane Beal

My biographical essay, “Bridget ‘Biddy’ Mason: A Black Pioneer Midwife of 19th Century Los Angeles,“ now appears in Midwifery Today 138 (Summer 2021).

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EXCERPT:

A midwife, a cattle-herder, a cross-country pioneer, a slave set free, a landowner in Los Angeles, a founder of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, and a wealthy woman and socially prominent philanthropist: Bridget “Biddy” Mason was all of these and much more.

“When Judge Hayes declared Biddy a free woman, he wrote in his decision that she was now able to go to work for herself “in peace and without fear,” which she did. But Biddy Mason did not limit her practice of good works to her chosen profession of midwifery. She lived a life of service in her urban community.

During the smallpox epidemic of 1871-1872, she faithfully cared for the sick as a nurse. She had the habit of visiting prisoners in jail, having once been jailed herself, though for no crime, and she encouraged prisoners who were incarcerated with food, hope, and kindness. After the Santa Ana River flooded, she set up a tab at a local grocery store and paid for food for those who had been impoverished by the flood. People in need would line up outside the door of her home to ask for help, and her family members had to manage the crowd. There were so many children in her home that some thought she was running an orphanage there.

In 1872, Biddy Mason became one of the founding members of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles. She gave the land on which the church was built. The church shared the building with the Los Angeles Board of Education and later, the Board, the Church, and Biddy Mason together founded a school for black children. In the 1800s, members of the FAME Church successfully worked to desegregate the schools of Los Angeles, so black and white children could attend school together. This, too, is part of Biddy Mason’s legacy.

Through this and many other charitable acts, Biddy Mason became a noted philanthropist in her city. She was known as Grandma Mason and was admired and loved by many people. Her children and grandchildren inherited her wealth and became respected civic leaders in Los Angeles.

When she died in 1891 at age 72, Biddy Mason was buried in an unmarked grave—but she was not forgotten. In 1988, members of the FAME Church and leaders of Los Angeles created a headstone for her that commemorated her life with the words: “Former Slave, Philanthropist, Humanitarian, Founding Member, First African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1872, Los Angeles, California.” Ironically, the grave marker failed to mention that she had been a midwife. Yet midwifery was Biddy Mason’s life-long calling and profession in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. Through her work, she kept safe the lives of many mothers and their children.”

“Resolving Shoulder Dystocia Using the Gaskin Maneuver or McRoberts Maneuver” by Jane Beal

My essay, “Resolving Shoulder Dystocia Using the Gaskin Maneuver or McRoberts Maneuver” now appears in Midwifery Today 137 (Spring 2021).

Excerpt:

A shoulder dystocia is when a baby’s head emerges from the birth canal, but the baby’s body does not follow because the baby’s anterior shoulder is wedged above the mother’s pubis symphysis bone. A midwife instantly knows it when she sees it by the “turtle sign”: the baby’s head emerges, but then retracts, like a turtle going back into the shell. The baby’s exposed face darkens as it suffuses with blood and becomes puffy. The baby is stuck. The midwife has less than six minutes to get the baby out before hypoxia leads to brain damage or death …

… I witnessed another birth at Ot Nywal Me Kuc [in Uganda, East Africa] that involved shoulder dystocia. The woman was already laboring on all fours when my lamera, my sister-midwife, Laker, who was set to do the primary delivery in that case, looked up with a startled expression on her face and said, “Turtle sign!” Stephanie Holcombe, a certified nurse midwife working on our team that day, took swift action when Laker spoke up. Her strength surprised me! Stephanie literally lifted the laboring mother off the floor from her all-fours position, laid her on the bed, and used the McRoberts maneuver, bringing the woman’s legs up close and tight to her abdomen—and then applied supra-pubic pressure (sometimes called the Rubin maneuver)—to dislodge the stuck shoulder and deliver the baby.

“Call the Midwife: Jennifer Worth, a 20th Century British Midwife” by Jane Beal

My essay, “Call the Midwife: Jennifer Worth, a 20th Century British Midwife and the Birth of Conchita Warren’s 24th Child on TV vs. Real Life,” now appears in Midwifery Today 134 (Summer 2020).

EXCERPT:

“Anyone watching Episode 1 of Call the Midwife will be gripped emotionally by the life-or-death scenario portrayed when Conchita is injured and goes into preterm labor with her 24th baby. But that isn’t what happened in real life. According to the midwife’s memoir, what was most memorable about this completely normal birth was how the loving harmony between the mother and father contributed to a peaceful homebirth with no complications.”

“Zebel and Salome, the Virgin Mary’s Midwives: Doubt, Faith, and the Miraculous in a Medieval Legend” by Jane Beal

My article, “Zebel and Salome, the Virgin Mary’s Midwives: Doubt, Faith, and the Miraculous in a Medieval Legend,” now appears in Midwifery Today 131 (Autumn 2019), 44-46.

EXCERPT: 

“The birth of Jesus is perhaps the most famous birth in the world. It is called the Nativity (meaning “the Birth”) and represented in homes, churches, and communities by iconic Nativity scenes at Christmastime, when it is celebrated by Christians (and many non-Christians) worldwide. Nativity scenes recall figures from the birth and infancy stories of Jesus preserved in the gospels of Matthew and Luke as well as extra-biblical sources, including Christmas carols: a stable with a star shining over it; domesticated animals like the ox, ass, and sheep; angels, shepherds, and Magi (also known as the Wise Men or Three Kings); and Joseph and Mary, come from Galilee to Bethlehem to participate in a Roman census, and of course, the baby Jesus lying in a hay-filled manger.

            “Away in a manger, no crib for a bed –

            the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head;

            the stars in the sky look down where he lay –

            the little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.”

          “Away in a Manger” (late 19^thc.)

Figures that we almost never see depicted in Nativity scenes today are Zebel and Salome, the midwives who were long believed to have attended Mary when she gave birth to Jesus. That’s because no midwives are named, or even mentioned, in the Nativity accounts in the biblical Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But in the late-antique and medieval periods, several well-known written documents and visual sources depict two midwives with Mary when Jesus was born. These midwives, Zebel and Salome, play a vitally important role in such depictions: their doubt and faith, their practical knowledge and spiritual authority, are used to verify the miraculous nature of the virgin birth.”

“The Crowned One” by Jane Beal

My poem,“The Crowned One,” now appears in Midwifery Today 130 (Summer 2019), 4.

THE CROWNED ONE 

Sometimes the bough breaks.

The finger of God
reaching toward Adam
does not touch him.

The desert at sunset is dry.

The pool of water
does not take away the pain,
and the baby-girl does not turn inside.

We wait too long.

On the third day,
her mother is cut open
to bring forth her baby.

But that is not enough for life.

She breathes muddy water
into her fragile lungs
and lies still.

She’s waiting to heal.

II.

A woman
breathes the breath of life
into the baby.

The newborn baby-girl awakens!

After two minutes,
once again her heart is beating
like a little bird’s.

For four days, she sleeps without a name.

Then, an angel-like-a-girl-child
comes down from heaven
into her mother’s dream:

her name is Stefania,
and she will live!

jb

“Galanthis, Alcmene’s Midwife: A Childbirth Myth of Ancient Greece and Rome” by Jane Beal

My essay, “Galanthis, Alcmene’s Midwife: A Childbirth Myth of Ancient Greece and Rome,” now appears in Midwifery Today 129 (Spring 2019): 46-47.

EXCERPT:

“Almost everyone has heard of Hercules, famous for his strength, who performed twelve great labors and many other feats – including holding up the sky for Atlas and bringing Alcestis back from Hades (death) to her husband (life). Once there is a Disney animated feature film about a hero, like “Hercules” (Disney, 1997), the hero’s name becomes familiar to many children and their parents world-wide. But few people know the name of Hercules’ mother, Alcmene, and even fewer know about Alcmene’s friend and midwife, Galanthis, who used her wits to defeat the goddess who was holding back the birth of Hercules.”

 

“Jane Hawkins: A Colonial American Midwife and a Complicated Birth” by Jane Beal

My essay, “Jane Hawkins: A Colonial American Midwife and a Complicated Birth,” appears in Midwifery Today 128 (Winter 2018), 28-29.

EXCERPT: 

“Jane Hawkins came from St. Ives, Cornwall, to America with other Puritan Christians in 1635. She settled in Boston with her husband, Richard Hawkins, where she served as a midwife. She was an older woman at this time, a Christian, but not a member of a Puritan church (McGregor 1996, 186). She shared the practice of midwifery with Anne Hutchinson, another colonial midwife who served the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was under the leadership of Governor John Winthrop. During a period of great religious upheaval in the community, she attended a complicated birth, which led to suspicions of her involvement with witchcraft, though she was not formally charged (Hall 1991, 19). She was subsequently forbidden to practice midwifery and banished from her home. As a result, she moved to Rhode Island with her family. The extraordinary circumstances that affected the life of the midwife Jane Hawkins deserve close attention … “

New Essays in Midwifery Today

My essays, “Supporting Sexual Abuse Survivors in Childbirth” and “Mary Hobry: A Midwife and a Murder Mystery in 17th C. London,” now appear in Midwifery Today 126 (Summer 2018), 24-24-25 and 48-50.

EXCERPT #1: 

“Not every woman can or will experience a birth that helps to facilitate the healing of past abuse. But as midwives, we can do our best to listen to women’s stories, respect their free will, and share the wisdom we have. Healing can come from the care we provide even when things do not go the way that women hoped. It takes a lot of love and patience in the process, and the work can be exhausting. But if the women are not giving up, then neither should we.”

EXCERPT #2:

“L’Estrange titled his short book, A Hellish Murder Committed by a French Midwife on the Body of her Husband, Jan. 27, 1688, for which she was arraigned at the Old Bailey, Feb. 22, 1687, and pleaded GUILTY, and the Day Following Received Sentence to be BURNT.It became the basis of other writings about Mary Hobry, including one poem by E. Settle and another by an anonymous poet. The latter poem versified all the details from the case in rhyming couplets; it was called “A Warning-Piece to All Married Men and Women, Being the Full Confession of Mary Hobry, the French Midwife, Who Murdered her Husband on the 17^thof January, 1688 (as also the Cause Thereof).” The poem treats the tragedy as a moral parable, beginning with the lines:

All you that married men and women be
Give ear unto this woeful tragedy,
That now befell a Frenchman and his wife,
Who lived together in continual strife (lines 1-4).

The poem ends: “She now is burned, and begs of all mankind / And women too, Wisdom by her to find” (lines 164-65).”

 

“‘Desco da parto’: The Birth Tray and Its Cultural Significance in Renaissance Italy” by Jane Beal

My essay “‘Desco da parto’: The Birth Tray and its Cultural Significance in Renaissance Italy,” now appears in Midwifery Today 125 (Spring 2018): 26-28.

ABSTRACT: 

In this essay, I describe the practical and decorative use of the desco da parto or birth tray in Renaissance Italy. After the Black Death, birth trays were used from 1370 to the third quarter of the sixteenth century to serve the mother’s first postpartum meal: They commemorated the life of mother and baby kept safe in childbirth. The deschi featured both secular and sacred scenes, painted in tempera, with gilded borders. They could be round, twelve-sided or sixteen-sided. After serving their primary purpose, they could later be hung upon walls in family homes and passed from one generation to the next.

IMAGES OF DESCHI

Triumph of Chastity

birth tray presented to Lucrezia di Giovanni Tornbuoni,
mother of Lorenzo de’Medici, “the Magnificent”

Other biblical, allegorical or mythological desci images:

Apollonio di Giovanni di Tommaso; The Triumph of Love; Paintings Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-triumph-of-love-30752

 

 

“Judith Wilks: The Queen’s Trusty Midwife” by Jane Beal

My biographical essay on Judith Wilks, royal midwife to Queen Mary of Modena, now appears in Midwifery Today 123 (Fall 2017), 48-51.

EXCERPT:

“When the Catholic Queen Mary of Modena, wife of King James II of England, gave birth on June 10, 1688 to a son, James Francis Edward, the Prince of Wales and heir presumptive to the throne, a vicious rumor sped throughout predominantly Protestant England: that Queen Mary’s own child was stillborn and that the boy presented to the public was a spurious changeling child who had been brought to the birthing room in a warming pan (Haile 190; cf. Corp 184, 190, 200).

This accusation outraged the Queen’s midwife, Judith Wilks, who had delivered the prince. She wrote a letter to her cousin, Mrs. Winifred Wilks, which was later published, that provides a historical document attesting to the legitimate birth and the midwife’s own strong feelings of loyalty to the queen, love for the newborn baby, and fury at the wide-spread slander (Wilks 1-2).

To better understand this letter, it is important first to understand the life of the queen whom Judith Wilks served as a midwife and the historical tensions between Catholics and Protestants that were so exacerbated in England in the seventeenth century.”

“‘The Sainted Ann Hutchinson’: Midwife of Grace (1591-1643)” by Jane Beal

My biographical essay, “‘The Sainted Ann Hutchinson’: Midwife of Grace (1591-1643)” now appears in Midwifery Today 122 (Summer 2017): 29-31.

EXCERPT: 

” … After the banishment, the Hutchinson family moved to Rhode Island. While there, Anne Hutchinson gave birth for the fifteenth time not long after the trial—which suggests she had been pregnant during the trial itself (Schutte 85ff). Extant descriptions—one written by her doctor, John Clark—suggest that Hutchinson birthed a hydatidiform mole, which looked like a handful of transparent grapes (Battis). Some of Hutchinson’s detractors saw her pregnancy loss as proof of God’s punishment or of the midwife’s league with Lucifer (Schutte). This sort of thinking had already been evident during the controversy over the relationship between grace and works, when it had been discovered that the midwife, years before, had attended a Quaker woman, Mary Dyer, who had given birth to a deformed baby. At the recommendation of the minister, John Cotton, the family had buried the stillborn quietly, for no one wished the birth to be interpreted as a sign of God’s displeasure.

Nevertheless, the story of the birth became known during the controversy, and it was taken as a sign against Anne Hutchinson. To those for whom good works were directly connected with God’s blessing, and all kinds of human suffering was the result of God’s wrath, it was difficult to imagine that God’s grace might work through an accident in nature. But they had forgotten the lessons of Job.”

“Managing GBS” by Jane Beal

My essay, “Managing GBS,” now appears in Midwifery Today 122 (Summer 2017): 50-52.

FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

“The goal of managing Group B streptococcus (GBS) is prevention of maternal chorioamnionitis and neonatal infection (such as respiratory disease, general sepsis or meningitis). Careful management helps to protect life and health. There are various ways to manage GBS, which we can consider and apply appropriately in midwifery practice.”

“Joana Torrellas and the Spanish Inquisition”

My essay, “Joana Torrellas and the Spanish Inquisition,” now appears in Midwifery Today 121 (Spring 2017), 42-43.

EXCERPT:

“Joana Torrellas was not a witch. She was a Catholic midwife from Valencia, Spain, who lived during the fifteenth century. She married and had five children, three sons and two daughters. After being widowed, she moved to Teruel to live with her daughter, who was married to the town jailer, Joan Gil.

As part of her normal practice of midwifery, Joana recited prayers, such as the Prayer of St. Cyprian, which were contained in a small book that had been given to her by her mother-in-law (who was also a midwife). Joana usually placed nómina (literally, “the names”), a necklace with a pendant on it or in which were written the names of Christ, around the necks of laboring mothers, and she asked for the blessing of the Virgin Mary during the birth. When a woman was about to birth the placenta, she would place a book with a crucifix in it under the woman’s feet in order to help facilitate delivery.

This kind of “spiritual midwifery” was apparently welcome in Valencia, where Joana was from, for it occasioned no scandal. But in Teruel, where Joana was an outsider, her normal practice might have been unusual …”

 

“Martha Mears: Nature’s Midwife” by Jane Beal

My essay on Martha Mears — a nature-loving, bird-watching, poetry-quoting, 18th c. English midwife — now appears in Midwifery Today (Fall 2016).

Excerpt:

“Mears places a high value on cultivating the emotional well-being of women during pregnancy. In her third essay, devoted entirely to this subject, she writes that the prayer of the wise is ‘the enjoyment of a sound mind in a sound body’ (26). She observes the connection between a woman’s emotional health and the first learning experiences of her unborn child. Drawing on the author Strabo, quoted in Chavalier Ramsay, she specifically adds the authority of the ancients to her argument:

‘In some of those valuable remains of eastern antiquities, which even the withering hand of time has delighted to spare, we are told that the Magi began, in some sort, the education of their children before their birth. While their wives were pregnant, they took care to keep them in tranquility and perpetual chearfulness, by sweet and innocent amusements, to the end, that, from the mother’s womb, the fruit might receive no impressions but what were pleasing, mild, and agreeable to order. The justness of the principle on which they proceeded is fully confirmed by the history of the whole human race, and certainly deserves the serious attention of parents …’ (26-27, italics in the original).

Mears goes on to attack the problem of ‘one of first and most prevailing passions in the breasts of pregnant women’ (27): fear. She observes that ‘the happiness of becoming mothers is sourly checked by preposterous ideas of danger. They take alarm at the change, at the novelty of their feelings, and the few instances they may have known of miscarriage, or of death, outweigh in the quivering scale of fancy the numbers not to be counted of persons in the like condition, who enjoy both then and afterwards a greater degree of health than they ever before experienced’ (27). Mears is all for rooting out fear by knowledge and hope, which she calls ‘the balm and life-blood of the soul’ (28), and with the help of a husband’s love. These are her answers to fear and melancholy.”