History Post 2: A midwife's Tale Thematic Question 2

What was the role of a Midwife during the late 18th and early 19th century Maine? What changes did Martha Ballard see in medical practices during her life time?

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century midwives had many duties and were often skilled in more than just delivering babies. Being a midwife at that time was hard and tiring work for skilled women. During Martha’s career and especially toward the end, male doctors became more common and pushier and began to change medical practices of the time.

Being a midwife was difficult for many reasons. There were troubles and annoyances, even dangers before they even got to the birth site. Midwives had to be prepared to be called at any hour of the day or night while they were busy or sleeping. “Snowd. I was calld at 7 hour Evening to see Mrs. Mthews who is in labor. I tarried all night. Slept none.” (1) Martha was almost always deprived of sleep, because delivering babies was not the only thing a midwife had to do. When Martha arrived home after a tiring delivery had to be prepared to finish her house hold work of baking, mending, washing and more before she could act on the thought of rest.

Braving the travel to the patient’s house was often a dangerous part of being a midwife. Crossing rivers in the night and the cold of winter, and being thrown from horses were only some of the troubles encountered by Martha Ballard and other Maine midwives.

Midwives had to be prepared to deliver babies and know what to do if the birth did not go properly on its own. Not only did they have to know how to deliver babies, but how to care for them or their mothers if they became ill. Many Midwives were not just skilled in midwifery, but also often in herbal medicines, and treatment of the sick. Martha Ballard made many hundreds of sick calls as well as the calls that came from mothers in labor. This often called for extra work at home for the midwife, such as more gardening than the average woman because of the special herbs needed and also medical attention for family members as well as those who pay for the service. “I have done my hous work and dug gardin.” (1)

Originally a midwife was much more common to be called for a delivery than a doctor. If a doctor was called it was usually only in extenuating circumstances. The midwives were very competent and the people knew it. During Martha Ballard’s time this began to change, especially toward the end of her life, doctors called for sickness and births were becoming more common.

For a time it seemed as though doctors knew their place; and that place was taking care of the more serious issues. Midwives delivered babies unless there were serious complications and then a doctor was called. For sicknesses or discomforts healers had their herbs. Doctors were sometimes consulted or even worked with without real competition or hostility, and midwives and healers were even invited to attend dissection autopsies. “I was Calld to my sons to see the Desection of the Son of Esquire Davis which was preformd very Closly.” (1)

Quietly competition came and grew as doctors became more determined to deliver the services that had long since been the woman midwife or healer’s tasks. Many midwives and healers disapproved of some of the doctor’s methods such as bleeding and always seeming to use the most drastic methods first. “They inform me that Dr Page says it must be opined, which I should think improper from present appearance.” (1) They also did not like the lack of experience of some doctors, midwives and healers had to stand by quietly as they were slowly pushed out of the way. Eventually it became unfitting for a woman to perform the duties that they had been practicing for so long.

Being a midwife in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries took skill, diligence, competence, sacrifice and the good heart of a neighbor. Being a midwife meant long days and nights of hard work, whether for their practice or what was expected of them as a woman running a house hold. Martha Ballard delivered over eight hundred and fourteen babies in her life time while also keeping up her house, taking care of her own family and tending to hundreds of sick people. Male doctors eventually took this away from the women, making midwife and healer duties not fit for women and therefore taking over their practice, but they couldn’t keep the women away from medical practices forever. Women began trying to gain their rights to attend the sick once again. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in the United States to graduate from medical school, and one of her followers, Mary Hobart, who was related to Martha Ballard, was herself a pioneer in the medical world of women.

Source:
(1) A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich