#midwives

You gasped, splashing legs clamouring for resistance against the edge of the pool, writhing back against Kento. Kento's face crumpled, his teeth gritting so hard against your agony, they crunched.

You bellowed, another contraction roaring through you like wildfire, and you gripped Kento's arm. Your scream became a roar as you pushed, absurdly, overwhelmingly dragged from your body by a brutal force of nature. You barely heard Kento's hushed rumble, through the haze of blinding pain.

"...can do it, you can do it, you're so strong-- not long now-- nearly here, they're nearly here, our baby--"

You gasped again, seeing stars for a moment, surely being cleaved in half and you panicked, crying out and digging your nails in. Kento didn't care, surely deserving this, certain your nails didn't sting as much as the stretch you felt stung. You babbled at Kento and the midwife, pleading, bargaining.

"I can't do it anymore-- please don't make me, please please--"

"You're doing it, sweetheart. The biggest part of the head is coming with the next push-- with the next one, just listen to me, and breathe. No pushing. Just little breaths."

You looked up at Kento, your eyes feverish with the love that ripped you asunder. Kento nodded, trusting you, trying to hide the fear and miserable male helplessness and uselessness that threatened to fill him with violence, if he did not cling so desperately to being gentle instead.

Kento felt you tense; another pain peaking as you shook your head, sobbing so briefly, only to be replaced by gritted resolution. Kento saw the fire in your eyes as you began to roar, and thought his heart may break with the weight of his adoration.

Kento grasped you close, your fingers plaited together. He whispered to you as you trembled, fighting against nature as your body pushed for you.

"...that's it-- that's it-- just breathe, little breaths, little breaths-- I know it stings, good girl, good girl-- and the head's out!"

Kento's heart stopped, to see the crest of a little head, its soft waves of hair swishing in the birthing pool. Invigorated by thrill, almost weeping with excitement, he whispered to you, heated and trembling.

"--oh god-- right there, they're right there-- nearly got them, we'll know what we've got--"

"Just one more big push, sweetheart-- one big push with the next contraction, and your baby's here--"

Almost ten months of blooming and worry and scans and building and laughing and crying and aching and fearing, all ended in one enormous push, and a whoosh, and a cry...

...and a cry, wet and sweet and crumpled and on your chest, mother and child still bound together by the string of life.

Kento buckled against the side of the pool. Still he held you, looking down at you, looking down at your baby, blue and angry and baleful at having been shoved into the world from their warm dark kingdom.

Arms replaced the womb, and Kento huffed a couple of great sobs to hear you babble love at your scrumply flailing babe.

"--oh my god-- oh you're so beautiful-- oh, mummy loves you-- daddy loves you--"

Daddy. Kento almost buckled again, nuzzling his tears away into your hair, smothering your sweaty cheeks with kisses and relief. His voice was thick with joy, the fever of pain in your eyes replaced with elation, clasping the boon of a champion within your arms.

"Thank you. I can't...I can't thank you-- I-- love you, love you both so much--"

You gazed up at Kento, basking, your eyes glazed. "Kento...Ken...what have we got? Tell me-- tell me what we've got."

Kento sniffled, looking at the midwife as if for permission. She looked on, an enamoured, privileged bystander, and nodded encouragingly to Kento. Kento leaned over you, gently lifting his baby's legs apart, peering under the cord.

He huffed a single wet laugh, and looked at you, honey-brown eyes rimmed red. Kento's voice was gravelly as he stroked your hair back, to your wondrous grin.

The room most likely would be cleaned and prepared, windows and curtains would be shut off for warmth, privacy and for magical reasons to avoid evil spirits and all. Warm water or pieces of cloth for cleaning the baby and the mother from blood probably would be provided as well as some other items. The text of Soranus gives us a list of items necessary for childbirth at least for his time period during the first century AD.

What must one prepare for childbirth To prepare for natural childbirth one must prepare oil, warm water, warm cataplasms, soft sponges, woolen blanket, bandages, pillow/neck supporter, smelling salts, stool with a back, two beds at a suitable house. The oil would be for assisting the beginning of birth and the breaking of water, the warm water would be for cleaning the area, the warm cataplasms will be to relieve the pain while the[soft] sponges for wiping the fluids. The woolen blanket will be for covering the woman's body while the bandages for wrapping the newborn. The pillow will be to place the baby by the head of the mother till they are asleep once the placenta is removed. The smelling salts would be of mentha (mentha pulegium), ball of clay and creams of apple and quince and if weather permits it, citrus and ripe fig and anything in order to revive the new mother. The stool with the back for the birthing woman to settle herself. The stool, however, must have a small opening in the middle of its seat so it won't be too wide, and so not reaching beyond the woman's thighs, not not too tight either, so it won't be pressing against the vaginal opening which would be more difficult while the wider opening can be filled with pieces of cloth. The width of the stool should be able to fit effectively even some bigger woman and must also be analogous to her height. For a smaller woman a stool will be used for the height difference to be eliminated

(Translation by me)

By the way forgive me I made a very quick and probably not the best translation for this text so if I made some mistake forgive me (even if that is relatively closer to our modern koine language so it is a bit easier to read than the homeric or classical Greek) Anyways as you see this man has created a very detailed account for the things we need before or after childbirth in ancient Greek society but of course one could assume the practices are what he has gathered in his time period. Most likely they are very similar to ancient times like Bronze Age but I expect we can find variations. But as you see he also gives us the information that women by n large wouldn't necessarily give birth reclined. In antiquity and in other parts of the world, women oftentimes gave birth while sitting on a stool, squatting, kneeling or even standing, to assist the birth with gravity, however we do have evidence of women also giving birth lying down or reclined like these anaglyphs from roman period:

Here's also an example from Ostia from a birthing stool

Squatting and sitting seem to be more frequent positions than lying down while kneeling seems to be encouraged for difficult births in Roman times but we can expect it to be a thing. Squatting and sitting births are depicted as far back as ancient Egyptian depictions We can expect the procedure to be pretty standard, keeping the woman warm and there was also fire in the room to help. Probably fats and oils used for massages for relief or even for cooking some meal that the woman would eat during her labor could be expected to exist especially for longer labors. The woman was also prepared by loosening up her belts and releasing her breasts and also untying her hair and generally making her feel as comfortable as possible for her long procedure.

We have some clues that there were even recommendations for preparations before childbirth like Soranus of Ephesus mentioning the beneficial factors of some essential oils or ointments rubbed on the woman's body and genitalia which we expect was something the elite could afford. Several herbs would be suggested as healing process post-partum too. Such as Artimisia from what I see

to help the woman postpartum.

Premature or unusual births happened of course such as birth with the feet. In roman texts we see also the superstition that a child coming with the feet is a signifying of death because as Pliny said "It is natural for the human to come to this world with the head and leave with the feet", which I assume it is due the difficulties of births that are reversed in the first place or the possible complications throughout the process. We do see mentions of that in Hippocrates too. Now one thing seems to be mostly common that the life of the mother was prioritized over the life of the child (unlike what most TV shows and movies say aka that the evil father prefers to see the woman die and his heir saved) aka sometimes the practice of "sacrifice the fruit to save the tree" was a thing that was going on. Soranus speaks on the cases where the baby is stuck or dead or for some other reason not coming out smoothly that the midwife should move to drastic solutions such as pulling the baby out or use some other tool and if that didn't work, they would prioritize the mother over the fetus. If the fetus died during such procedure it was still preferable over the woman dying. Craniotomy and Embryotomy (aka "cutting the scull" or "cutting the embryo" as literal translations) must have been performed in that cases. Yes of course the infanticide is not ethical once the child is out of the womb but during childbirth, if the mother was at serious risk, she was the first priority. That of course can be seen also through the lenses that many infants would die after birth due to complications but also that the woman's life was first priority. In fact there are even some superstitions that appear to texts from time to time that if a mother died due to complications of childbirth, the child was "blamed" for "murder" (a classical and surprisingly realistic to this belief example from pop culture is how Lord Tywinn Lannister in Game of Thrones, accuses Tyrion of killing his mother in childbirth)

The final stage of removing the placenta could be done in similar ways that is done today such as naturally happening or by manual removal. The placenta in some cases and beliefs was buried outside the house. I can expect something like that happened in ancient Greece too although I am not 100% sure on that. However there seems to be an encouragement to remove the placenta as fast as possible because it was believed if staying in for long it can cause disease and issues. I guess that comes from cases where the woman suffered from septicemia or delirious fever post-partum.

The woman after birth if she had given birth to the stool, she was being placed to the bed to rest and given something to eat (I suppose some bread or broth). The text of Soranus mentions two beds. That is because he suggests a hard bed for labor and a soft bed for rest post-partum. The baby would be washed and cleaned and helped to open its eyes and all and wrapped up in blankets or bandages in a bundle after the midwife performs a series of things to help the shaping of the scull and others. The very first thing they did was place the baby on the ground and announce the gender of the child and hold it up to observe if it is healthy or have any other abnormality that needs to be checked on. The child would be then placed next to the mother

Breastfeeding seems to be generally discouraged from happening immediately after birth but I would expect that not THAT many people would be holding that to the tee but I expect it was more common for royalties. Now breastfeeding was believed by some to be a lower act so Queens were discouraged from doing that and the child would be given to a wet-nurse instead. That of course it has to do with many cultural values for instance Hippocrates believed that breast milk was produced by the blood of the mother and so after getting out of the womb, the baby would have other ways to feed so sometimes wet nurses served the purpose of giving the child some other food apart from their birth mother. Also since breast-feeding thanks to the hormonal work in a woman's body, was acting as mild contraceptive (plus a woman was encouraged to perform abstinence while breastfeeding anyways), royalties would often choose to hire wet nurses or use slaves for that so that the woman once recovered she would be able to conceive again (urge I would expect much stronger if the child was a girl instead of a boy) The existence of wet-nurses is not only apparent in myths (for example Euryclea being the wet-nurse of Odysseus and potentially of Telemachus too) but even on texts of Linear B where women seem to either serve as slaves or even potentially earning a living as wet-nurses. However the phenomenon of a Queen breastfeeding her baby after all might not be as unheard of as we think. For instance we hear the story where Zeus places Heracles on the breast of Hera to breastfeed so Hera was producing milk and fed a child or even cases like Clytemnestra taking a toddler Orestes with her in Aulis seems to be pointing towards the direction that she was breastfeeding him.

Unfortunately as someone expects childbirth was a really dangerous procedure that costed the life to many women giving birth either because of direct complications during childbirth (pre-ecclampsia or ecclampsia on severe but also rarer occasions, complications during birth etc) or after it (septicemia, infections etc) so the general aspects of childbirth were sometimes seen the same essentially as death and murder. Miasma in other words was considered a thing after birth so the house would be cleansed and no visitors would be allowed in it for some time (you can find traces of that practice in the modern world with the standard waiting periods of around 40 days after birth that the baby and the mother are walking out together. Not everyone follows it but some do) which of course also is linked with the postpartum period of the mother and the health and safety of the child but of course the superstitions might have played their part too. Babies after birth were also considered to be between this world and the world of the dead so in one way the mother that had just given birth was both in danger and in need for protection due to her exposed health but also dangerous because bringing a baby to this world was a miasma sometimes compared to the miasma of death.

Of course I need to say that realistically especially in lower classes, such practice might not have been followed to the tee given that working women still worked with their children tied on them, working men were still expected to return to their lives and work and so on and so forth. Postpartum period probably and realistically speaking would be till woman and child were up and fit again for being walking about. I mean even till very recently it is not rare that women would have given birth out at the fields while they worked or some other setting. I would expect the royalty might as well have followed these practices more, not for any other reason but out of fear that their child would have been infected or cursed etc

Child mortality was after all a leading cause of death for a long time and infants often didn't make it past their first year so extra caution for an heir for instance might as well be needed.

Last but not least in this HUGE thing and I am sorry for blabbering, I wanted to add my two instances where I do mention some cases of childbirth in ancient Greek context through the twin birth of Cassandra, based on Pausanias:

and the birth of Megapenthes son of Menelaus:

not very detailed of course but still some portion of these I mention to the notes especially of the latter fic. I might as well have some more accurate and detailed mentions of practices in future works of mine.