Meghan reportedly seeks private childbirth – medieval women really did have one
Other royal births have been announced almost immediately, with the new family posing for photographs soon afterwards on the steps of the Lindo Wing of St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Meghan and Harry, however, have chosen to “celebrate privately as a new family”, before placing their baby in the public eye.
This private zone gave expectant women the time and space to prepare for, and recover from, childbirth, while awaiting the moment they were permitted to re-enter the church, in the ceremony of purification after childbirth. Painted birthing trays, or salvers – such as this desco da parto from Florence – were given to wealthy women after childbirth, to serve mulled wine and clean linens: a sign of the value bestowed on noble births. Though present in this depiction, men were rarely permitted to enter the lying-in room – entrance was by invite only, through the monitored doors.Childbirth was a dangerous business for mother and child in medieval times, regardless of their social station.
Such notions of the “wandering womb” are manifest in images from medical manuscripts that show the uterus “floating” around the words on the page. These disembodied wombs show common foetal presentations, and a reasonably accurate knowledge of anatomy – surprising, in an age when human dissection was taboo and male physicians had limited access to women’s bodies.The story of St Margaret, the patron saint of childbirth, was well-known to women in the middle ages.
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