#This was like dead in the centre of the especially fucked up birth practices period of history

[goddessofroyalty]

So I'm a little afraid to ask but what did you mean by the 'drug them until they start hallucinating so they're not aware' tag about childbirth?

So that was slightly exagerated for the point of the tag not everyone would hallucinate but... under the cut because we're talking about... traumatic birth pratices of our past.

So what I'm referring to there is what was called the 'Twilight Sleep' method of giving birth. I've linked to a webpage that goes into more detail.

But basically they gave the pregnant person a mixture of morphene and scopolamine to make it so they wouldn't remember the birth afterwards (and somewhat help with the pain it was mostly to block the memories though). Now if you don't know what scopolamine is off the top of your head that's okay - it's one of the key ingredients they used to make the real life zombies (it’s what blocked the memories). But funnily enough that wasn't the problem. Well it was the problem in terms that it increased the risk of complication. But its the morphene that causes halucinations in (some) people.

Of course when the two were used ideally they did what they were supposed to - dulled the senses and removed the memory entirely (which is still fucked up but you know I can see why people might want that option). But you have to be PRECISE with the dosage to have it work ideally and... that didn't always happen. So memories slipped though and because they had the logic that 'oh the mother won't remember this anyway' they basically had a free-for-all in terms of fucked up birth practices (restraining them to a bed, blocking their ears so they wouldn't hear, using every single kind of interventive birthing practice available to them even if it wasn't necessary, that kind of thing). So for some you had a mixture of halucinations with being physically restrained and in the worst pain of your life (because they tended to stop giving/decrease the dosage of the morphene because they won't remember this anyway) and... yeah... it as apparently exactly as unpleasant as that sounds. Also some people died from wrong dosages so bad on all fronts.

You have to remember though that this was only accessible to the Upper Class and people either living in/near a city or able to travel to one. The average person was still having a midwife come to their house and having basically 'gas' as the only pain relief available (it wasn't until after the World Wars that most babies were born in hospitals).

Funnily enough one of the things they were using previous and within the lower classes (nitrous oxide gas) is still used in childbirth to this day as a pain management option alternative to an epidural.

If you want a (super brief) history of pain relief in childbirth read the abstract of this paper (that I WILL be reading in full tomorrow night).