Midwife training in European cities began in the 1400s, but rural women were usually assisted by female family or friends. However, it was not simply a ladies social bonding event as some historians have portrayed – fear and pain often filled the atmosphere, as death during childbirth was a common occurrence. In the United States before the 1950s, a father would not be in the birthing room. It did not matter if it was a home birth; the father would be waiting downstairs or in another room in the home. If it was in a hospital, then the father would wait in the waiting room. Fathers were only permitted in the room if the life of the mother or baby was severely at-risk. In 1522, a German physician was sentenced to death for sneaking into a delivery room dressed as a woman.The majority of guidebooks related to pregnancy and childbirth were written by men who had never been involved in the birthing process. A Greek physician, Soranus of Ephesus, wrote a book about obstetrics and gynaecology in the second century, which was referenced for the next thousand years. The book contained endless home remedies for pregnancy and childbirth, many of which would be considered heinous by modern women and medical professionals.Both preterm and full term infants benefit from skin to skin contact, sometimes called Kangaroo care, immediately following birth and for the first few weeks of life.
Childbirth, also known as labour and delivery, is the ending of pregnancy where one or more babies exits the internal environment of the mother via vaginal delivery or Caesarean section. In 2019, there were about 140.11 million births globally. In the developed world most deliveries occur in hospitals, while in the developing world most were at home births.The most common childbirth method is vaginal delivery. It involves four stages of labour: the shortening and opening of the cervix during the first stage, descent and birth of the baby during the second, the delivery of the placenta during the third, and the recovery of the mother and infant during the fourth stage, which is referred to as the postpartum. The first stage is characterized by abdominal cramping or back pain that typically lasts half a minute and occurs every 10 to 30 minutes. Contractions gradually becomes stronger and closer together. Since the pain of childbirth correlates with contractions, the pain becomes more frequent and strong as the labor progresses. The second stage ends when the infant is fully expelled. The third stage is the delivery of the placenta. The fourth stage of labour involves the recovery of the mother, delayed clamping of the umbilical cord, and monitoring of the neonate.