I recently edited a collection titled Birth and the Irish: a Miscellany, which traces the history of childbirth in Ireland from the seventh to the 21st centuries. While the short essays, from scores of contributors across a wide range of disciplines, are uniformly informative, engaging and often humorous, there are also many aspects of this volume's sweep through the history of Irish childbirth that I have found deeply uncomfortable and which have made my heart heavy.
My heart was heavy when I read of the young 14th century Carlow woman sentenced to hang for having supplied food and drink to her brothers accused of murder. Her pregnancy secured her a temporary stay of execution until the child would be safely delivered and she could face her sentence. I wondered what it must have been like for her to consider that the birth of her child would mean her own certain death.
My heart was heavy when I discovered that there were some 4,645 cases of suspected infanticide in Ireland between1850 and 1900 – and that’s only those we know about – and that this constituted what some historians describe as a form of post-natal family planning in Irish society of the time.
I learned of the 16-year-old girl in the 1960s who, when experiencing the pains of labour, was told that she was 'paying for her sins'
My heart was heavy when I realised how widespread the use of a host of purgatives and deleterious mixtures as abortifacients was in 19th- and early-20th-century Ireland, and that, as early as 1849, Dr William Wilde attributed this to the disgrace associated with illegitimacy: ‘Can we wonder at the . . . Irish girl wishing to conceal her shame by the destruction of her offspring, in a country . . . where caste is most certainly lost by circumstance of pregnancy before or without marriage?’
My heart was heavy when I read of the stigmatisation of infertility in the 19th and early 20th century; or the feelings of guilt, and even sinfulness, that many women experienced after a miscarriage or stillbirth.
My heart was heavy when confronted with the image of the father of an unbaptised baby discreetly carrying his stillborn child to be buried at dusk in a lisheen, and the subsequent silence and inner anguish regarding the child’s ultimate fate that must have followed such a difficult task.
My heart was heavy when I was reminded of the practice of ‘churching’ mothers in the weeks after childbirth. No matter that it came to be repackaged as an occasion of thanksgiving, its deep roots as a purification ritual were not so easily disguised. How else might one explain the belief that a new mother should not visit other houses until she was ‘churched’ lest she bring with her misfortune or pollution?
My heart was heavy when I came upon the account of a lady who recalled the death of her daughter in 1968, just 36 hours after birth: ‘There was no thing about it. I don’t think my sisters even came. There was no funeral . . . She deserved a funeral’. The silent grief. The unacknowledged loss.
My heart was heavy when I learned of the 16-year-old girl in the 1960s who, when experiencing the pains of labour, was told that she was ‘paying for her sins’.
My heart was heavy when I read of the young woman in the 1970s who overheard a doctor discussing why he had refused to permit her to have a C-section when it was clearly advisable: ‘She’s an unmarried mother. She can have it this way; she’ll remember it and she won’t ever do it again’.
My heart was heavy when I discovered that it was not until 1995 that the Civil Registration of stillborn babies was enacted (Stillbirths Registration Act, 1994), finally conferring legal status on the profound loss suffered by parents in this situation.
My heart was heavy when I realised that before 2019, and the Coroners (Amendment) Act, inquests into maternal deaths in Ireland were not mandatory, and families seeking them had to undergo a long, complex, and expensive process to discover the reason for the death of their loved one. It was as if maternal deaths did not exist in the eyes of the law.
How many future historians will still find their hearts heavy, and what will they identify as the failings of our generation?
My heart was heavy when I was reminded of the impact of Covid-19 restrictions on maternity services in Ireland since March 2020, restrictions that, while well intentioned, brought enormous distress on mothers who now had to give birth without the support of their birth partner, or who were obliged to attend ultrasound appointments alone, some having to face the news of a stillbirth, or a foetal anomaly, without a loved one by their side.
My heart remains heavy. It remains heavy because the suffering of mothers has not been confined to the pages of history books. How many future historians will still find their hearts heavy, and what will they identify as the failings of our generation?
Salvador Ryan is professor of ecclesiastical history at St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. Birth and the Irish: a Miscellany is published by Wordwell Press
