Early Saints and Childbirth

In the new Relief Society manual, I love that it covered the history of women in relief society being called to medical and midwifery duties. It was very ahead of the time for the leadership of the church to value such education of women and a testament to the care taken for women of that time. Money and resources were used to train women in faraway places for safe obstetric and family care.
How cool would it be to be set apart as a midwife? very cool me thinks.

Sister Snow said: “Are there here, now, any sisters who have ambition enough, and who realize the necessity of it, for Zion’s sake, to take up this study? There are some who are naturally inclined to be nurses; and such ones would do well to study Medicine. … If they cannot meet their own expenses, we have means of doing so.”

With this encouragement, some Relief Society sisters studied medicine in the eastern United States. They came back to Utah as doctors and taught classes in midwifery and home nursing. Emma Andersen Liljenquist, who attended the classes in Utah, recorded some of her experiences:

“I enjoyed [the course] very much, and after being set apart by Apostle John Henry Smith and several of the others, I returned home to do my work, having been promised by the Apostles that if I lived right I should always know what to do in case of any difficulties. …

Did you also know that women of the early church performed blessing rituals for each other - especially surrounding the time a woman prepared for childbirth. The following blessing gave me a lot of peace in my last pregnancy and the words came to my mind often as I prepared for the delivery.


from Stand and Deliver:
 By time they reached the Great Basin in the late 1840s, LDS women frequently conducted washing, anointing, and blessing ceremonies in each others' homes; most often, this was done for a woman preparing to give birth. The practice lasted for about a century.


One blessing recorded about 1909 was as follows:

We anoint your spinal column that you might be strong and healthy no disease fasten upon it no accident belaff [befall] you, your kidneys that they might be active and health and preform [sic] their proper functions, your bladder that it might be strong and protected from accident, your Hips that your system might relax and give way for the birth of your child, your sides that your liver, your lungs, and spleen that they might be strong and preform their proper functions, . . . your breasts that your milk may come freely and you need not be afflicted with sore nipples as many are, your heart that it might be comforted.

They continued by requesting blessings from the Lord on the unborn child's health and expressed the hope that it might not come before its "full time" and that

the child shall present right for birth and that the afterbirth shall come at its proper time . . . and you need not flow to excess. . . . We anoint . . . your thighs that they might be healthy and strong that you might be exempt from cramps and from the bursting of veins. . .

The document combines practical considerations, more common to women's talk over the back fence, with the reassuring solace and compassion of being anointed with the balm of sisterhood. The women sealed the blessing:

Sister ___ we unitedly lay our hands upon you to seal the washing and anointing wherewith you have been washed and anointed for your safe delivery, for the salvation of you and your child and we ask God to let his special blessings to rest upon you, that you might sleep sweet at night that your dreams might be pleasant and that the good spirit might guard and protect you from every evil influence spirit and power that you may go your full time and that every blessing that we have asked God to confer upon you and your offspring may be literally fulfilled that all fear and dread may be taken from you and that you might trust in God. All these blessings we unitedly seal upon you in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

The tender attention to both the women's psychological and physical state is an example of loving service and gentleness. 


There is also evidence to suggest that early Saints were  comfortable with breastfeeding in public  - women these days still feel the need to cover their babies even while in the mother's lounge. I can't really imagine anything worse than being up against a warm body eating a meal and having my whole self covered with a blanket. I try to rarely do it with my babies - so I definitely don't cover in the mother's lounge.
I've linked to this post before but I thought I'd include the pictures on my blog so it will be in my blog books that my daughters flip through as they grow and they will digest the normalcy of breastfeeding.

 The Handcart Company by CCA Christensen 1900

Illustration from Harper's Weekly 1871