Throughout the novel, Martha is frequently called to deliver babies from women of all walks of life. Which laboring mother did you feel most connected to? Have you or anyone you know delivered a child with the assistance of a midwife?
I can’t remember names but I was surprised that the midwife had to bury those that didn’t live and had to be the one to declare father’s names. She learned her trade from an older midwife No classes back then. These women were to be admired.
There was a doctor present for the delivery of my two children. Yet, it was a labor room nurse who helped push my face-up baby through the birth canal. Nurses, like midwives, seek natural ways to birthing rather than the cutting and gutting by doctors.
This is a tough question, my father was to be delivered by a midwife in 1928, however and doctor stepped in and carelessly delivered him and injured him with forceps. So not only was he born prematurely, he was now suffering with cerebral palsy. Of course my grandmother was told he would probably not live, and if he did, she should institutionalize him. Thankfully, my grandmother pushed back and raised him to be a respectable man who would later marry and have a family.
My mother was a county doctors helper / and midwife in the early 30s and participated many in births. She never talked details, but when I was growing up many people told me my mother delivered them or there children. it seems to be growing preference these days. I think the youngest girls in Frozen River were the most fearful and unprepared.
1 Like