Sunday, 27 July 2008

Sleeping delivery

Nan told me was that when she was having her children, back in the 40's and 50's, the doctors would knock you out with chloroform at the point of delivering the babies, so the mum wasn't actually awake when the babies were born. I had read of this happening and so it was interesting to hear about it first hand.

What a strange practice - I'm not sure of the logic behind it but it seems really silly and a bit sad to me.

3 comments:

Mary said...

Wouldn't have been to stop you feeling the pain?

Alison said...

Possibly, but why not knock them out for the whole thing then?

Mary said...

Maybe they didn't have enough chloroform? Or maybe they needed to be awake for the pushing and once the baby could be pulled out by someone else it was ok to knock the mum out? Grandma might know?