francene--blog. Year 2013
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February 12th

2/12/2013

 
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Life is so easy now. Sometimes I wonder how people survived in bygone days without medical teams to help in times of crisis. For instance, in the past, women gave birth with only the aid of people close by—maybe the local midwife if the village was big enough to need one. What happened if the pregnant woman was carrying several babies?

I watched a BBC television last night on that subject. The British Cold Case team arrived at a site which had been occupied from the earliest times in Baldock, Hertfordshire, which is north of London and close to where I live. They'd been called to investigate the former life of a woman lying on her side, who had been buried two thousand years ago with the skeletons of three babies around her. Tests put together an interesting picture of her past life.  


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The 4ft 11 inch tall woman lived in 100AD beside a Roman occupation, midway between when Julius Caesar arrived in 55BC, was driven off, and returned one year later, and when the Romans left in 500AD. The tale of Kind Arthur dates from this latter period.

However, the woman wasn't Roman, but Celtic, so she wouldn't have had any assistance from their doctors. By linking DNA to two of the three babies to the thirty-five-year-old mother, they ascertained that she was the earliest recorded mother of triplets in Britain. She must have died in childbirth. The second child couldn't get through the birthing canal without aid, and the third remained inside her. The man buried above her could have been her husband. In those days, a couple married for life and supported each other into their dotage. He could have asked to be buried close to her.


Has the human race grown too soft and reliant on procedures to become pregnant and give birth? Could we survive unaided now days?

Susie Brown link
2/12/2013 01:38:22 am

So very sad for the woman and her babies. Today there are many women who still use midwifes for at-home-births with wonderful experiences. I myself, would have died during childbirth if I lived back in that time. Thank God for c-sections. :)

Cher link
2/12/2013 02:14:21 am

Wow - that is scary, sad and brave all in one! Yeah often wonder how they coped - I guess you just do?
Great post!
Cher

jennifer link
2/12/2013 08:56:50 am

there is a photo floating around facebook of a woman who birthed triplets naturally and is breastfeeding (the photo itself showed her nursing two and playing with the other). Amazing.

Alana link
2/13/2013 10:00:43 am

Speaking as someone who would have died in childbirth if not sooner in my pregnancy without the aid of modern medicine - I am grateful for same. A lot of women were not as lucky, given the mortality rate of women prior to the last hundred years. There was herbal medicine, true, and I think the ancients may have known more about medicine than we think, but still....how many people died from simple infections? Or consider how many soldiers in the U.S. Civil War died from sickness and not directly in battle?


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    Author

    Francene Stanley, author of many published novels. If you like my writing, why not consider purchasing one of my books? You'll see them on the sidebar below.
    Born in Australia, I moved to Britain half way through my long life.

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