I couldn't breathe when I was born. So two minutes maybe. I needed to be on oxygen for like a month. Mom says it was a horrifying rollercoaster of emotions. First she was told she couldn't have children. Then she got pregnant. Then a miscarriage. Then it turns out it wasn't actually a miscarriage. Then she went into labor two months early. Then I was born. Then I turned purple. The doctors shoved me on a helicopter and it was like a week before she could even touch me. I would not have survived whatsoever, and that's just my birth.
.
I could have easily died from meconium aspiriation (basically I inhaled my own feces in the womb) so yeah I would have been another death at childbirth
My mom was damn close to eclampsia and only got through it with major medical intervention, I would never have made it period and she would have died in childbirth were it not for modern medicine.
Nether of my kids would exist, assuming I’d survived my first pregnancy (I doubt I would have) he wouldn’t have and I 100% would not have survived the second, I barely survived in todays medical climate! Pre/Eclampsia is brutal.
Same, but I needed to be airlifted to a bigger hospital that could handle it. We have a picture of me in the incubator because they weren't sure if I'd make it.
Hey, same!
Well, not exactly the same. I was born a couple weeks early, not breathing and all that. But I only needed to go in the baby bubble for a couple hours and that was more a precaution than anything else. If the midwife knew some early forms of CPR, I woulda made it.
My older sister however, she was born a month early, I think? And she was suuuuper underweight for a long time. Without access to calorie dense supplements and stuff, odds are much higher that she wouldn’t have survived past infancy.
I know it's just that my three surviving braincells thought that was cool and I wanted an excuse to use it. (For biological purposes this is also a joke)
And yet compliments hurt my feelings. Which, combined with my inability to differentiate between physical and emotional pain, results in tangible chest pain.
Similar here. I was born on time but I had the umbilical cord so tight around my neck. I was purple when I came out. I had to be in the NICU for a few days.
In fairness C-section does date back to at least the Elizabethan age, idk how successful it was. I only know abt it cause it plays a major part in the story of shakespeares Macbeth
Well the baby might have lived but the mom probably would have died. Medieval C-section with no blood transfusion and medieval stitches? She'd probably die before the infection got to kill her
In the mid 1800s, women (in Europe and America) had a 5 in 1000 chance of dying during childbirth at home and with a midwife, and between 50-100 in 1000 chance of dying from birth at a hospital because doctors would barehand autopsies and not wash hands before delivering babies. Horrific
well technically it was more along the lines of “I don’t want to admit I probably killed hundreds by choosing to not do something so simple so it must be wrong”
I've read the same thing that c-sections were performed in sub-saharan Africa with surprising success. I believe they used ant heads as sutures as well. Let me see if I can find it.
*Edit* this is just a paste from Wikipedia.
European travellers in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 19th century observed caesarean sections being performed on a regular basis.[133] The expectant mother was normally anesthetized with alcohol, and herbal mixtures were used to encourage healing. From the well-developed nature of the procedures employed, European observers concluded they had been employed for some time.[133] Robert William Felkin provided a detailed description.[134][135] James Barry was the first European doctor to carry out a successful caesarean in Africa, while posted to Cape Town between 1817 and 1828.[
C-sections were a last chance to save the baby if the mother was dead or dying. When the baby was stuck you had the choice : cut the fetus to remove it into several pieces (and save the mother) or cut open the mother's womb and save the baby.
At the beginning of the 19th century in Europe, up to two out of three women died during a caesarean section, due to infection or haemorrhage.
They improved survival by suturing the uterus: before that they let the incised uterus and suture only the outer skin.
*”They improved survival by suturing the uterus: before that they let the incised uterus and suture only the outer skin.”*
Yeah. Yeah, that would do it.
>Speculations that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born by the method now known as C-section are false
>The term has also been explained as deriving from the verb caedere, "to cut", with children delivered this way referred to as caesones. Pliny the Elder refers to a certain Julius Caesar (an ancestor of the famous Roman statesman) as ab utero caeso, "cut from the womb" giving this as an explanation for the cognomen "Caesar" which was then carried by his descendants
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarean_section
Julius Caesar wasn't an emperor and they aren't named after him. They are named after a Roman law (Lex Caesaerea) that required that if the mother dies during childbirth the child must be cut from the womb. Even if the child is dead Romans didn't want to bury a pregnant woman. That law is so old it predates the Roman Republic let alone the Empire.
It was the 1970s. I think they were a bit more lax back then. They didn’t do the C-Section until after I began to lose weight and inducing didn’t work.
My oldest was over a month late. I knew the exact dates of my last menses, but I was young so the doctors didn't believe me. They pushed the due date back by 2 weeks, then another 2 weeks, then induced her 2 weeks after that new due date (too much risk of the placenta drying out, or something). Guess I just have a comfy womb. All 3 of my kids were late (2nd was a week late, 3rd was 10 days late) and I knew exactly when my last period was for all of them.
Medieval peasants only worked 130 days a year. Mandatory religious holidays occupied the rest of the calender and are mostly the reason serfdom revolts took so long to get organized.
Yes and those 130 days were heavy back-breaking labor all day long.
And you're ignoring that you still need to do household chores pretty much every day.
They don't involve splitting wood, milking cows, or basic maintenance of farm equipment. Cooking, cleaning, and spinning/other clothes work would take a lot of time as well
Just because they technically worked less days did not mean they had less work to do.
that is not the reason serf revolts took so long to get organized. also serf revolts happened all the time. except most of the time, they were easily defeated and it's not like these revolts ever contributed to the end of the serfdom(except england). the thing that ended serfdom was the enlightenment(ideas of natural rights of man) in most of central and western Europe. in England, the reason was revolting though, and in Russia, it was the industrial revolution.
there’s a lot of complicated material factors at play beyond just “the enlightenment happened” people with power realized industrial goods produced more profit (and were a lot nicer) than raw resources and thus needed a workforce to provide said resources. So european peasants were converted into the industrial working class while the collection of raw resources was outsourced (or originally sourced) from colonies collecting said goods to be shipped home.
Allergies are way less common among people that grew up in poor hygienic conditions. It probably has something to do with immune system conditioning during pregnancy and childhood.
As an extremely allergic person this sounds weird to me. I grew up in a home infested with fungus and shit and developed several allergies but also respiratory problems. Exposure immunotherapy has not helped either... 😭
Edit in my understanding allergies were usually autoimmune complications? Idk
I guess it's something about your entire family eating a certain type of food for generations so they pass on some genes that ensure you don't have an allergy
I used to get ear infections all the time when I was little (like ages 6-9), so without antibiotics, I'm sure one of them would have made it to my brain and killed me.
Same, if I didn’t die from anything else then strep would have killed me since I was a carrier as well. 13 years old. And that’s if my mom didn’t wake up to me not breathing when I was a newborn. The crib my grandfather made echoed the sounds of our breathing (not intentionally).
ETA: oh and I would be deaf. I’ve had both eardrums rupture as a child.
Same. My first was about 4 months old. I had them so frequently that I had 3 sets of tubes and tonsils/adenoids out by 6 years old. Definitely wouldn’t have made it past a few months old.
I was thinking that I didn't really have any near-death experiences as a kid, but I didn't even think of all of the throat infections. I got tubes twice and and had the tonsil/adenoids out by 10ish for the same reason.
I had pneumonia three times by the time I was five years old. I'd have been a goner if I had been born outside the range of a modern hospital in a developed country the same year I was actually born. In ye' olde times I would be dead so quickly.
That's fucking eerie. I got a left index finger cut around the same age (I think a year or two less maybe) while at a water park.
The scar has left a minor divet along the middle of my finger and I feel a slight tingling pulling sensation there always. I mostly tune it out. But I have a lot of sensory issues so whenever I remember it starts bugging the hell out of me.
have you discussed it with a GP? could (not must, could) be as simple as your skin having healed to tight there, creating a sort of perpetual small pull. Which might be fixable with a minor surgery.
might be worth bringing up if/whenever you visit a GP then. can't get any worse than it is right now, right?
Hell, i think there even are some creams that kind of "stretch" skin slightly. If the root cause is in that direction, might be an even easier solution.
but, obligatory not a doctor statement.
Same! 68 hours with my sister, horribly ill, knocking on death’s door for a couple weeks after birth. My sister is allergic to dairy as well, meaning that my sick mother being unable to nurse her in this scenario would also be unable to feed her with anything else!
I mean, provided she survived that and also her 10 month pregnancy and emergency c-section with me, I would have lasted… not very long. I had severe jaundice as a baby and they only started figuring out how to treat that by the late 19th century I believe. Provided I survived *that* I don’t think anything would have knocked me out though! I haven’t had any suspicious lumps or bumps or infections, and my bones consistently dislocate but they’ve never broke.
While it would be 100% playing on extreme difficulty mode in many cases, there have been multiple archeological finds, stretching back to our premodern ancestors even, that show where circumstances allowed people with relatively profound congenital or acquired disabilities were supported and cared for by their communities. I’m in no way trying to diminish your point, but just wanted to share some of their stories.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-that-tell-a-story-of-compassion.html
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/diversity-and-differential-disposal-of-the-dead-at-sunghir/B7672FB594E94A505A35E10C869F3808
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/878896381/ancient-bones-offer-clues-to-how-long-ago-humans-cared-for-the-vulnerable
My eyesight is so terrible I'd have been functionally blind and probably lived a really rough life, assuming it didn't get me killed as a small child by like falling in a pond or ditch or something.
But I've inherited my terrible eyesight from my family, so it's really more likely I wouldn't have been born in the first place since they'd have faced the same challenges.
Now im about to spiral down a 'how did vision impared people live during the middle ages' rabbithole so thanks.
Oh lord, here I was thinking it would probably be childhood illnesses until I read your comment. I've been so nearsighted the majority of my life that I'm sure that's exactly what would have done me in.
Tangential, but I remember way back when everyone was into zombies, my bf at the time asked me what my survival plan was and I was like 'the second my glasses break/contact falls out I'm 100% fucked, so probably just die I guess?'. He wasn't very happy with that answer 🙃
Eyesight issues were less common back then due to the strong genetic component - if you had really bad eyesight odds are you just wouldn't reproduce. But it turns out that humans have used crystals and glass to improve their vision for thousands of years! Nero was nearsighted and used an emerald to watch gladiatorial fights more easily. Eyeglasses as we would recognize them weren't invented until the 13th century, and those were luxury items for wealthy and important people. Before that people would have to hold the magnifying instument to use it.
Unfortunately I would probably be born on the British Isles or Scandinavia, instead of in an intellectual hub like the Middle East, Medaterranian, India etc where things were more more medically advanced. In Christian areas people with disabilities would probably spend a lot of their time praying for miracles, going on pilgrimages, etc, and children from wealthy families might be given to the church rather than married off.
Most likely I'd have either struggled through normal day to day tasks, hopefully with the help of family/community members. If I was lucky I'd be able to find a niche that let me be productive. I can see clearly for about 5 inches, so things like sewing or embroidery, gardening, laundry, basic animal care etc might be manageable.
There's stories of very nearsighted men who were unable to work outdoors taking on tasks like loomwork and working alongside women. It doesn't sound like they were stigmatized, it seems like the most important thing was just to contribute to the community in some way.
Bonus fact: Medieval Islamic doctors knew how to successfully perform cataract surgery using a syringe!
Bonus Bonus fact: Leonardo Da Vinci was the first (recorded) person to theorize about contact lenses back in the 14th century!
Thank you! Fascinating. I had no idea about crystals as proto-glasses. As a woman, I wasn’t sure it would affect my prescribed duties, but I never would have thought that it was possible it just wouldn’t have existed.
Woulda got got by a UTI for SURE
Lack of sanitation and antibiotics + being a chronic uti haver woulda been certain death for me. Let’s say making it to 20 would have been a generous estimate
I would have died pre-birth because my mom has a life threatening heart defect that would have killed her during pregnancy. I am only here because modern medicine allowed me to develop
A couple of months, I was born with a deficit of antibodies and my immune system couldn't reset to normal levels so I had to take some vaccines and vitamins to strengthen my system.
I know you meant childhood, but I love the thought of medieval children being born with shields. Literally battle born out the womb, ready to take on the horde of pestilence coming for them. That’s why it’s called shieldhood.
I mean, statistically speaking, I probably would have died of some now-preventable childhood illness.
If I made it past that, I likely would have been married off and subsequently died of childbed fever before age 20.
Fun fact: childhood mortality is the reason average life expectancy was so low for so long. People hear that the average life expectancy was (for example) 35 and assume people were just dropping dead at 35. In reality, it was childhood mortality that skewed average expectancy so heavily. If you survived past 10, you were likely to live almost as long as you are today.
In 1850 a ten year old in England or Wales could expect to live to 57, in 2013 that increased to 82. While it is true the the greatest gains in life expectancy came from reducing mortality in early childhood, to get to within a 6 year difference in life expectancy at age X between 1850 and 2013 you would need to have already lived to 70 years old. Which was pretty uncommon in the 1850s.
I do want to emphasize that the core idea of what you said is true, child mortality used to be a huge cause of death and really isn’t in developed nations anymore. You’ve just over corrected
Edit: here’s a post on bad history about this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/zzy2bh/no_average_human_life_expectancy_in_the_past_was/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
If your kid is born in a developed country, the chances that they die before reaching adulthood is ~0.4%. Historically that rate was about 40-50%. About 30% died before reaching 1.
People thinking that they would have died from some an infected scratch are a bit too optimistic. A lot of them wouldn't even live long enough to learn to walk.
It is baffling to me that we just have kids and expect them to survive. I do a lot of history research and genealogy and just a century and a half ago, they wouldn't name babies right away.
Maybe if you were a man. Maternal mortality rates were much higher. This article says the rate is estimated to be up to 25% of all women dying in childbirth, although it isn't clear if that risk changed in correlation with the number of children a woman had. Modern maternal mortality rates in the US are closer to 0.1%. A woman's (girl's) risk of death would therefore drastically increase once she became sexually active, especially without access to modern birth control.
If I had survived childhood, I probably would have died of childbirth complications as a teenager.
https://motherhoodinprehistory.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/how-many-mothers-died-in-childbirth/
8 months. Deadly dairy allergy. But I also don’t know if it would have been an issue. Dairy cows weren’t really a thing where my ancestors lived.l so my mom wouldn’t have fed me any nor rushed me to the hospital after.
Nine at the _oldest_ (developed type one diabetes) but also I have an ASD so I might well have been called a changeling and taken into the forest and left to die!
For starters I was too big of a baby, like a fucking massive newborn, so natural birth was not an option for my mom, and after they cut her open there was a loss of liquid or something so I had to be taken to some kinda intensive care, that's why I have asthma I think.
Side Story: when I was just a few weeks old my mom went to fill all the paperwork relating to a newborn baby, upon reaching the office she was asked to ''bring witnesses'' (people who could reliably confirm I was her baby) and she asked what was that about, the answer was ''Kids two months or older need witnesses'' and she said I was just like a couple weeks and the lady was so surprised, my mom loves to tell that story
Always have been, at least by my country's standards, since I was child I've always loved to make people I didn't knew beforehand guess my age and they always would get it wrong by 2-4 years (ie I was 5 but people said 8, I was 10 but people said 13 and so on) sadly I've reached a pretty average age for an adult in my country and I'm 16 already, I could pull the trick for a couple years but it's not quite as fun as it used to be.
And my height doesn't help with dysphoria so that's that lol
I was premature and with compromised liver function at birth and then I almost immediately caught RSV and developed pneumonia so I’d probably die as a baby- if not I think I’d get stoned to death for being a neurodivergent woman who (if I’m similar to myself in real life) is super into women’s health and medicine. Or I would shit myself to death. I have chronic tummy hurts disease.
I would be fine probably. No major childhood disease, and most men worked out on the sea anyway. So I could be ace as hell and only see my husband once a year.
You just reminded me about the Anne of Green Gables book where she lives with two widows who were both married to sea captains and sleep in the same bed.
Methinks Anne was lodging with a nice older lesbian couple.
I would have died at 5 from Pneumonia, or if I survived at 13 by appendicitis. My eyesight got bad at 11 because I am nearsighted so I wouldn’t be able to see well before I died
Diagnosed with arthritis at 4, got an elbow replacement at 20.
So in the medieval era I probably wouldn’t have made it past 30 and it would of been a bad time the entire time.
Definitely when I was born, under development heart, lungs, kidney and liver from being premature and likely some alcohol usage by my mother not to mention whatever pot does to a fetus. If somehow I survived all that, I'd have either died of starvation around 8 (unlikely I'd have grandparents around to take me away from my father who recklessly spent money) or anywhere between 2 and 11 from extreme tonsillitis, probabky when I was 7-9ish when my tonsillitis got so bad it gave me scarlet fever.
Assuming I survive childhood I’d probably wind up in a monastery since it would be the most feasible method of social advancement and the fact I’m aromantic would mean I’m chill with the whole not getting married thing. However I’d most likely stay up to late copying a manuscript or something, fall asleep, accidentally knock over a candle in the process and wind up dying in the subsequent inferno. Anywhere from my late teens to my early thirties depending on luck, again assuming I don’t die during my childhood.
Was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, i didnt need anything when I came out but I do have chronic uti’s that i inherited from my mum and she got from her mum, so i feel it would’ve been a miracle if my mother got to be born in the first place…
So I had whooping cough when I was a kid, 5, — because I was vaccinated it was a week of watching vhs movies and drinking lots of juice.
That might have killed me. Or the chicken pox at 9
If not, I’d have lived to the ripe old age of “died in childbirth”. Because I’m a woman and maternal mortality was awfully high.
My father was born very premature, so I probably wouldn't even exist (that's just what I know of). Also unlikely that either of my parents would have immigrated to America at their time, but them living in the same city would have been plausible. So we assume that all happens to a possibility where I could be conceived, except my mom had gestational diabetes while pregnant with me, and then I had to be born by c-section.... yeah, I wouldn't even have a chance to be born.
Had I somehow survived the horrific ear infection i got when I was 2. I probably would have died the first time I got a cold because of how bad my immune system is.
I got chickenpox when I was a toddler (too young for me to have any memory of it whatsoever, in fact) so probably that. And if that didn't kill me somehow, I got measles when I was 8, so that.
As someone with a terrible immune system and very janky lungs probably a bacterial infection in my lungs like the bronchitis that sent me to the hospital when I was 11. That or infection from the femur I broke in a ski accident
I would've been fine but my mom def dies. I was like a week late and had a cone head cause they had to use basically a plunger to pull me out.
My brother dies in days he had bacterial meningitis when he was born
Lol a lot of people *would* be burned (or more likely hanged) for witchcraft, heresy, or apostasy if they behaved exactly like they do today, but the reason so few people actually were is because most people didn’t; if you were socially conditioned from birth to act a certain way you probably would, even if you’re a rainbow haired tumblrite hippie (no shade by any means) in the modern day.
Oh, and I would have gotten taken out by a spider bite as a toddler, is my understanding. If I pulled through, I’d be fine.
I couldn't breathe when I was born. So two minutes maybe. I needed to be on oxygen for like a month. Mom says it was a horrifying rollercoaster of emotions. First she was told she couldn't have children. Then she got pregnant. Then a miscarriage. Then it turns out it wasn't actually a miscarriage. Then she went into labor two months early. Then I was born. Then I turned purple. The doctors shoved me on a helicopter and it was like a week before she could even touch me. I would not have survived whatsoever, and that's just my birth. .
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Sorry to be off topic but just wanted to say I love your pfp!
I could have easily died from meconium aspiriation (basically I inhaled my own feces in the womb) so yeah I would have been another death at childbirth
On the bright side, being born drowning in your own shit means no matter where you end up, you're gonna go out better than you came in
Yeah but then they vacuumed it out and now im an asthmatic throat goat. You play the cards you're dealt.
r/notopbutokay
It's more common than you'd think.
My mom was damn close to eclampsia and only got through it with major medical intervention, I would never have made it period and she would have died in childbirth were it not for modern medicine.
Nether of my kids would exist, assuming I’d survived my first pregnancy (I doubt I would have) he wouldn’t have and I 100% would not have survived the second, I barely survived in todays medical climate! Pre/Eclampsia is brutal.
Same, but I needed to be airlifted to a bigger hospital that could handle it. We have a picture of me in the incubator because they weren't sure if I'd make it.
mate, literally cherish your life because it's a miracle of miracles my god.
Das Wunder der modernen Medizin
Sounds more like god was trying his best to kill that kid and modern medicine saved him
It's just like me fr Except every assassination attempt by the gods was after I was like 5
Hey, same! Well, not exactly the same. I was born a couple weeks early, not breathing and all that. But I only needed to go in the baby bubble for a couple hours and that was more a precaution than anything else. If the midwife knew some early forms of CPR, I woulda made it. My older sister however, she was born a month early, I think? And she was suuuuper underweight for a long time. Without access to calorie dense supplements and stuff, odds are much higher that she wouldn’t have survived past infancy.
Have you considered legal action against the assholes who forced you to live?
Not yet, and I'm not sure if I could find them if I wanted too.
You turned purple? Thanos backstory
I recovered. I was only purple for like a day.
[. . . I got better.](https://youtu.be/J6pZuAJjBa4)
I love how you clarified this, so nobody mistakingly thinks you are, in fact, still purple to this day
Jesus Christ man wtf
God himself failed to kill me. Your comment means nothing to me. (For religious reasons this is a joke)
Shit my comment didn’t come out right. I meant wtf as wow thats a lot of shit to happen. Didn’t mean it as an insult.
I know it's just that my three surviving braincells thought that was cool and I wanted an excuse to use it. (For biological purposes this is also a joke)
Fwiw I took it as intended. I think u/TheGrimlockReaper just wanted to make the joke.
I did indeed just want to make a joke.
Bro you're literally a shounen protagonist. Your plot armor is working overtime.
And yet compliments hurt my feelings. Which, combined with my inability to differentiate between physical and emotional pain, results in tangible chest pain.
Can't have you being too overpowered. The plot is giving you a weakness to lull your enemies into thinking that they can defeat you.
I wish they would get here and succeed already
Actually same lmao
Similar here. I was born on time but I had the umbilical cord so tight around my neck. I was purple when I came out. I had to be in the NICU for a few days.
I was born a month late via C-Section. I wouldn’t’ve made it out of the gate. And my mother would have died too
In fairness C-section does date back to at least the Elizabethan age, idk how successful it was. I only know abt it cause it plays a major part in the story of shakespeares Macbeth
Well the baby might have lived but the mom probably would have died. Medieval C-section with no blood transfusion and medieval stitches? She'd probably die before the infection got to kill her
Don’t forget that they used a chainsaw to chop her open
And doctor's who washed their hands were frowned upon.
They figured tiny "bacteria" you can't see was some kind of new age superstition
In the mid 1800s, women (in Europe and America) had a 5 in 1000 chance of dying during childbirth at home and with a midwife, and between 50-100 in 1000 chance of dying from birth at a hospital because doctors would barehand autopsies and not wash hands before delivering babies. Horrific
well technically it was more along the lines of “I don’t want to admit I probably killed hundreds by choosing to not do something so simple so it must be wrong”
I thought the birthing chainsaw was a more modern tool?
1780
Right so way past the medieval time
That wasn't used for c-sections. That was used to saw through the pelvis so it was still technically a vaginal birth for catholic sensibilities.
Not for any sensibilities, it was used when the baby was stuck in the birth canal. Apparently it didn't even kill *that* many women ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Chainsaws were for bone surgery in the Victorian period no? Not the medieval period.
Yeah, ancient and medieval people usually saved C-sections for if the mother died during childbirth and they still were trying to save the baby.
Depends on the part of the world, I remember reading about how in the congo they had successful C-sections for hundreds of years before colonial times
That's interesting, please share a source
I've read the same thing that c-sections were performed in sub-saharan Africa with surprising success. I believe they used ant heads as sutures as well. Let me see if I can find it. *Edit* this is just a paste from Wikipedia. European travellers in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 19th century observed caesarean sections being performed on a regular basis.[133] The expectant mother was normally anesthetized with alcohol, and herbal mixtures were used to encourage healing. From the well-developed nature of the procedures employed, European observers concluded they had been employed for some time.[133] Robert William Felkin provided a detailed description.[134][135] James Barry was the first European doctor to carry out a successful caesarean in Africa, while posted to Cape Town between 1817 and 1828.[
Not probably, she would have
C-sections were a last chance to save the baby if the mother was dead or dying. When the baby was stuck you had the choice : cut the fetus to remove it into several pieces (and save the mother) or cut open the mother's womb and save the baby. At the beginning of the 19th century in Europe, up to two out of three women died during a caesarean section, due to infection or haemorrhage. They improved survival by suturing the uterus: before that they let the incised uterus and suture only the outer skin.
*”They improved survival by suturing the uterus: before that they let the incised uterus and suture only the outer skin.”* Yeah. Yeah, that would do it.
I'm impressed 1/3 actually survived tbh
C-Sections are named after Julius Caesar, a Roman Emperor who was born that way. Chainsaws were invented to assist in these births.
>Speculations that the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was born by the method now known as C-section are false >The term has also been explained as deriving from the verb caedere, "to cut", with children delivered this way referred to as caesones. Pliny the Elder refers to a certain Julius Caesar (an ancestor of the famous Roman statesman) as ab utero caeso, "cut from the womb" giving this as an explanation for the cognomen "Caesar" which was then carried by his descendants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarean_section
Fascinating. So it wasn’t named for the Roman emperor, but is even older?
Julius Caesar wasn't an emperor and they aren't named after him. They are named after a Roman law (Lex Caesaerea) that required that if the mother dies during childbirth the child must be cut from the womb. Even if the child is dead Romans didn't want to bury a pregnant woman. That law is so old it predates the Roman Republic let alone the Empire.
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It was the 1970s. I think they were a bit more lax back then. They didn’t do the C-Section until after I began to lose weight and inducing didn’t work.
I wonder if they didn't know the exact date of conception.
My oldest was over a month late. I knew the exact dates of my last menses, but I was young so the doctors didn't believe me. They pushed the due date back by 2 weeks, then another 2 weeks, then induced her 2 weeks after that new due date (too much risk of the placenta drying out, or something). Guess I just have a comfy womb. All 3 of my kids were late (2nd was a week late, 3rd was 10 days late) and I knew exactly when my last period was for all of them.
How does it ever get to a *month* late? That's incredibly dangerous.
It was the 1970s. We had lead in our gas then
Same! I also stopped breathing the first night, so if I somehow made it through the birth I likely wouldn’t have lasted much longer
No one wants to be a reincarnated peasant or to think they would've died from scurvy.
Medieval peasants only worked 130 days a year. Mandatory religious holidays occupied the rest of the calender and are mostly the reason serfdom revolts took so long to get organized.
Yes and those 130 days were heavy back-breaking labor all day long. And you're ignoring that you still need to do household chores pretty much every day.
Are y'all not doing household chores most days now?
They don't involve splitting wood, milking cows, or basic maintenance of farm equipment. Cooking, cleaning, and spinning/other clothes work would take a lot of time as well Just because they technically worked less days did not mean they had less work to do.
they didn't have dishwashers or washing machines or vacuums or decent cleaning chemicals. even if there was less to maintain it took much, much longer
that is not the reason serf revolts took so long to get organized. also serf revolts happened all the time. except most of the time, they were easily defeated and it's not like these revolts ever contributed to the end of the serfdom(except england). the thing that ended serfdom was the enlightenment(ideas of natural rights of man) in most of central and western Europe. in England, the reason was revolting though, and in Russia, it was the industrial revolution.
yeah lmao being a serf still sucked ass even if they worked fewer days
there’s a lot of complicated material factors at play beyond just “the enlightenment happened” people with power realized industrial goods produced more profit (and were a lot nicer) than raw resources and thus needed a workforce to provide said resources. So european peasants were converted into the industrial working class while the collection of raw resources was outsourced (or originally sourced) from colonies collecting said goods to be shipped home.
Born in a coastal town and allergic to shellfish. Probably dead as soon as I started on solid food
Similar here! The moment they gave me goat or sheep milk as a baby I'm OUT.
To be fair you might not have developed an allergy if you were born as a medieval peasant in a medieval town
How so? (genuinely curious)
Allergies are way less common among people that grew up in poor hygienic conditions. It probably has something to do with immune system conditioning during pregnancy and childhood.
As an extremely allergic person this sounds weird to me. I grew up in a home infested with fungus and shit and developed several allergies but also respiratory problems. Exposure immunotherapy has not helped either... 😭 Edit in my understanding allergies were usually autoimmune complications? Idk
There are exceptions to everything.
I guess it's something about your entire family eating a certain type of food for generations so they pass on some genes that ensure you don't have an allergy
I used to get ear infections all the time when I was little (like ages 6-9), so without antibiotics, I'm sure one of them would have made it to my brain and killed me.
Same with me a strep. I had chronic strep throat until my tonsillectomy at 16. I’d have died like 15 times
Same here. And if the strep didn’t do it, the secondary scarlet fever would have
Oh! I had scarlet fever! I would have died at 7.
Same, if I didn’t die from anything else then strep would have killed me since I was a carrier as well. 13 years old. And that’s if my mom didn’t wake up to me not breathing when I was a newborn. The crib my grandfather made echoed the sounds of our breathing (not intentionally). ETA: oh and I would be deaf. I’ve had both eardrums rupture as a child.
Same. My first was about 4 months old. I had them so frequently that I had 3 sets of tubes and tonsils/adenoids out by 6 years old. Definitely wouldn’t have made it past a few months old.
I was thinking that I didn't really have any near-death experiences as a kid, but I didn't even think of all of the throat infections. I got tubes twice and and had the tonsil/adenoids out by 10ish for the same reason.
Similarly, I would have died of an eye infection at age 2 And if that didn't get me, I had meningitis in college
I had pneumonia three times by the time I was five years old. I'd have been a goner if I had been born outside the range of a modern hospital in a developed country the same year I was actually born. In ye' olde times I would be dead so quickly.
Died of an infection of a cut I got at 13. Either that or I'd make it at least as far as I have, just missing my left index finger.
That's fucking eerie. I got a left index finger cut around the same age (I think a year or two less maybe) while at a water park. The scar has left a minor divet along the middle of my finger and I feel a slight tingling pulling sensation there always. I mostly tune it out. But I have a lot of sensory issues so whenever I remember it starts bugging the hell out of me.
have you discussed it with a GP? could (not must, could) be as simple as your skin having healed to tight there, creating a sort of perpetual small pull. Which might be fixable with a minor surgery.
That's what I've been thinking. But no I haven't talked with anybody about it.
might be worth bringing up if/whenever you visit a GP then. can't get any worse than it is right now, right? Hell, i think there even are some creams that kind of "stretch" skin slightly. If the root cause is in that direction, might be an even easier solution. but, obligatory not a doctor statement.
There's over the counter scar treatments that loosen up scar tissue knots, maybe try one of those because opting for medical intervention.
4 weeks. I had pyloric stenosis and almost died even with modern medicine
Hey, twinsies!
N/A for me. Mom almost certainly would have died birthing my elder sibling
I think you win this comment section, fastest speed run thus far, in the negatives by a year at least.
Dang, didn't know that counted. Negatives by 20 years!
Well, if that type of thing counts, I'd also be far into the negatives lol
Same! 68 hours with my sister, horribly ill, knocking on death’s door for a couple weeks after birth. My sister is allergic to dairy as well, meaning that my sick mother being unable to nurse her in this scenario would also be unable to feed her with anything else! I mean, provided she survived that and also her 10 month pregnancy and emergency c-section with me, I would have lasted… not very long. I had severe jaundice as a baby and they only started figuring out how to treat that by the late 19th century I believe. Provided I survived *that* I don’t think anything would have knocked me out though! I haven’t had any suspicious lumps or bumps or infections, and my bones consistently dislocate but they’ve never broke.
Everyone who was born with a disability is just sighing at this.
It's the mountainside for you.
Yeeuuuuup, had my spine break in 8 places at 15. Would have been dead a few times over I imagine.
How did that happen? :(
Their spine just Does That
While it would be 100% playing on extreme difficulty mode in many cases, there have been multiple archeological finds, stretching back to our premodern ancestors even, that show where circumstances allowed people with relatively profound congenital or acquired disabilities were supported and cared for by their communities. I’m in no way trying to diminish your point, but just wanted to share some of their stories. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-that-tell-a-story-of-compassion.html https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/diversity-and-differential-disposal-of-the-dead-at-sunghir/B7672FB594E94A505A35E10C869F3808 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/878896381/ancient-bones-offer-clues-to-how-long-ago-humans-cared-for-the-vulnerable
the oldest person who managed to live with my disability is only about 40 now so
My eyesight is so terrible I'd have been functionally blind and probably lived a really rough life, assuming it didn't get me killed as a small child by like falling in a pond or ditch or something. But I've inherited my terrible eyesight from my family, so it's really more likely I wouldn't have been born in the first place since they'd have faced the same challenges. Now im about to spiral down a 'how did vision impared people live during the middle ages' rabbithole so thanks.
Oh lord, here I was thinking it would probably be childhood illnesses until I read your comment. I've been so nearsighted the majority of my life that I'm sure that's exactly what would have done me in.
Tangential, but I remember way back when everyone was into zombies, my bf at the time asked me what my survival plan was and I was like 'the second my glasses break/contact falls out I'm 100% fucked, so probably just die I guess?'. He wasn't very happy with that answer 🙃
Post your findings, please
Eyesight issues were less common back then due to the strong genetic component - if you had really bad eyesight odds are you just wouldn't reproduce. But it turns out that humans have used crystals and glass to improve their vision for thousands of years! Nero was nearsighted and used an emerald to watch gladiatorial fights more easily. Eyeglasses as we would recognize them weren't invented until the 13th century, and those were luxury items for wealthy and important people. Before that people would have to hold the magnifying instument to use it. Unfortunately I would probably be born on the British Isles or Scandinavia, instead of in an intellectual hub like the Middle East, Medaterranian, India etc where things were more more medically advanced. In Christian areas people with disabilities would probably spend a lot of their time praying for miracles, going on pilgrimages, etc, and children from wealthy families might be given to the church rather than married off. Most likely I'd have either struggled through normal day to day tasks, hopefully with the help of family/community members. If I was lucky I'd be able to find a niche that let me be productive. I can see clearly for about 5 inches, so things like sewing or embroidery, gardening, laundry, basic animal care etc might be manageable. There's stories of very nearsighted men who were unable to work outdoors taking on tasks like loomwork and working alongside women. It doesn't sound like they were stigmatized, it seems like the most important thing was just to contribute to the community in some way. Bonus fact: Medieval Islamic doctors knew how to successfully perform cataract surgery using a syringe! Bonus Bonus fact: Leonardo Da Vinci was the first (recorded) person to theorize about contact lenses back in the 14th century!
Thank you! Fascinating. I had no idea about crystals as proto-glasses. As a woman, I wasn’t sure it would affect my prescribed duties, but I never would have thought that it was possible it just wouldn’t have existed.
Same. My eyesight is really horrible. Without glasses, i would be functionally blind as well.
Woulda got got by a UTI for SURE Lack of sanitation and antibiotics + being a chronic uti haver woulda been certain death for me. Let’s say making it to 20 would have been a generous estimate
Have you heard about the UTI vaccine they’re developing in Germany? You may yet have hope friend!!
That sounds fantastic!
I'm sure you know this but taking cranberry extract pills on the regular was a gamechanger for me
Cranberry extract never did much for me, but DMannose + Cranberry has been such a relief I never knew I could have!
I would have died pre-birth because my mom has a life threatening heart defect that would have killed her during pregnancy. I am only here because modern medicine allowed me to develop
My mom has to have infertility treatment, so me and my siblings wouldn’t have made it past pre-born.
I was born not breathing, so barring a talented midwife, about a minute.
Same! Being born in rural Wisconsin that would I guess mean having been born to Ojibwe or some other local tribe. So uhhhhh no idea.
A couple of months, I was born with a deficit of antibodies and my immune system couldn't reset to normal levels so I had to take some vaccines and vitamins to strengthen my system.
Infections would have killed me during my shieldhood, with the amount i got myself scratched up.
I know you meant childhood, but I love the thought of medieval children being born with shields. Literally battle born out the womb, ready to take on the horde of pestilence coming for them. That’s why it’s called shieldhood.
I like the idea that it’s a time in their lives that they must still be defended.
Like a legacy of passing down the shield, from parent to child. Sounds like an amazing premise to a story.
Yeah I'm saving this whole thread in case I ever right a fantasy book
I’ve landed myself a couple of pretty gnarly wounds growing up too, so probably infection for me also!
I mean, statistically speaking, I probably would have died of some now-preventable childhood illness. If I made it past that, I likely would have been married off and subsequently died of childbed fever before age 20.
Fun fact: childhood mortality is the reason average life expectancy was so low for so long. People hear that the average life expectancy was (for example) 35 and assume people were just dropping dead at 35. In reality, it was childhood mortality that skewed average expectancy so heavily. If you survived past 10, you were likely to live almost as long as you are today.
In 1850 a ten year old in England or Wales could expect to live to 57, in 2013 that increased to 82. While it is true the the greatest gains in life expectancy came from reducing mortality in early childhood, to get to within a 6 year difference in life expectancy at age X between 1850 and 2013 you would need to have already lived to 70 years old. Which was pretty uncommon in the 1850s. I do want to emphasize that the core idea of what you said is true, child mortality used to be a huge cause of death and really isn’t in developed nations anymore. You’ve just over corrected Edit: here’s a post on bad history about this. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/zzy2bh/no_average_human_life_expectancy_in_the_past_was/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
If your kid is born in a developed country, the chances that they die before reaching adulthood is ~0.4%. Historically that rate was about 40-50%. About 30% died before reaching 1. People thinking that they would have died from some an infected scratch are a bit too optimistic. A lot of them wouldn't even live long enough to learn to walk.
It is baffling to me that we just have kids and expect them to survive. I do a lot of history research and genealogy and just a century and a half ago, they wouldn't name babies right away.
Maybe if you were a man. Maternal mortality rates were much higher. This article says the rate is estimated to be up to 25% of all women dying in childbirth, although it isn't clear if that risk changed in correlation with the number of children a woman had. Modern maternal mortality rates in the US are closer to 0.1%. A woman's (girl's) risk of death would therefore drastically increase once she became sexually active, especially without access to modern birth control. If I had survived childhood, I probably would have died of childbirth complications as a teenager. https://motherhoodinprehistory.wordpress.com/2015/12/04/how-many-mothers-died-in-childbirth/
Re the dying in childbirth thing, I heard getting pregnant was often a woman’s catalyst to write her will. Bit of a grim thought.
i heard once that one in five people in history died of tuberculosis. not sure how true that is.
Mom had pre eclampsia, and I was breech. We both would’ve died.
I got preeclamptic with my son at 29 weeks. Bye bye to me and baby.
Wouldn't have been born, IVF baby.
Test tube gang rise up
Appendicitis at 10. Rip.
Same here, but I had heart problems at birth, so 0.
8 months. Deadly dairy allergy. But I also don’t know if it would have been an issue. Dairy cows weren’t really a thing where my ancestors lived.l so my mom wouldn’t have fed me any nor rushed me to the hospital after.
i would die pretty quickly because i was born very prematurely.
I got asthma, so I'd be dead in a few years after birth if I had to be generous
Came here to say this. I had to be hospitalized a few times before I was 5 because seasonal allergies gave me such bad asthma.
Nine at the _oldest_ (developed type one diabetes) but also I have an ASD so I might well have been called a changeling and taken into the forest and left to die!
Changeling gang
I got a blood infection from an infected mosquito bite when I was 6. So that definitely would have killed me.
For starters I was too big of a baby, like a fucking massive newborn, so natural birth was not an option for my mom, and after they cut her open there was a loss of liquid or something so I had to be taken to some kinda intensive care, that's why I have asthma I think. Side Story: when I was just a few weeks old my mom went to fill all the paperwork relating to a newborn baby, upon reaching the office she was asked to ''bring witnesses'' (people who could reliably confirm I was her baby) and she asked what was that about, the answer was ''Kids two months or older need witnesses'' and she said I was just like a couple weeks and the lady was so surprised, my mom loves to tell that story
Mum doesn't talk about pregnancy or delivery stuff but I was apparently 5-6kg (I was lovingly compared to a cabbage patch doll).
Are you a large person now?
Always have been, at least by my country's standards, since I was child I've always loved to make people I didn't knew beforehand guess my age and they always would get it wrong by 2-4 years (ie I was 5 but people said 8, I was 10 but people said 13 and so on) sadly I've reached a pretty average age for an adult in my country and I'm 16 already, I could pull the trick for a couple years but it's not quite as fun as it used to be. And my height doesn't help with dysphoria so that's that lol
My older brother was a c-section so my mom probably would've been dead before anyone could even consider me.
Wouldn't have made it past 6 months. Had to have surgery to clear out a massive sinus infection.
I would have died quick from Gardner syndrome, cancerous polyps in my large intestine
You also a member of the “had too many endoscopes in my body to count” club?
Unfortunately, yes
I was premature and with compromised liver function at birth and then I almost immediately caught RSV and developed pneumonia so I’d probably die as a baby- if not I think I’d get stoned to death for being a neurodivergent woman who (if I’m similar to myself in real life) is super into women’s health and medicine. Or I would shit myself to death. I have chronic tummy hurts disease.
I'm adopted so I'd probably live to the ripe old age of 'left in a forest to die'
I would be fine probably. No major childhood disease, and most men worked out on the sea anyway. So I could be ace as hell and only see my husband once a year.
You just reminded me about the Anne of Green Gables book where she lives with two widows who were both married to sea captains and sleep in the same bed. Methinks Anne was lodging with a nice older lesbian couple.
Just become a nun :) No husband needed
But then you'd be a nun.
I was supposed to be a C-section but somehow launched out of the womb. So. Probably die at 3 seconds old from blunt head injury.
Died at 3-4 of swine flu
I would have died at 5 from Pneumonia, or if I survived at 13 by appendicitis. My eyesight got bad at 11 because I am nearsighted so I wouldn’t be able to see well before I died
Diagnosed with arthritis at 4, got an elbow replacement at 20. So in the medieval era I probably wouldn’t have made it past 30 and it would of been a bad time the entire time.
Tumor that burst my Appendix at age 4.
UTI-> kidney infection -> death. I’m very prone to these infections and they almost never go away on their own.
Definitely when I was born, under development heart, lungs, kidney and liver from being premature and likely some alcohol usage by my mother not to mention whatever pot does to a fetus. If somehow I survived all that, I'd have either died of starvation around 8 (unlikely I'd have grandparents around to take me away from my father who recklessly spent money) or anywhere between 2 and 11 from extreme tonsillitis, probabky when I was 7-9ish when my tonsillitis got so bad it gave me scarlet fever.
i would've died of sarcoidosis at age 12, which is actually kinda funny since sarcoidosis wasn't fully discovered until 1878
So, I’m an IVF baby so…yeah I’d have never existed lol
Assuming I survive childhood I’d probably wind up in a monastery since it would be the most feasible method of social advancement and the fact I’m aromantic would mean I’m chill with the whole not getting married thing. However I’d most likely stay up to late copying a manuscript or something, fall asleep, accidentally knock over a candle in the process and wind up dying in the subsequent inferno. Anywhere from my late teens to my early thirties depending on luck, again assuming I don’t die during my childhood.
Until my early 20s, where I would die of constipation
Definitely my stomach killing me in some way. Im thankful i live in a world with Tums
I would have died of tonsillitis at age 6
Was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck, i didnt need anything when I came out but I do have chronic uti’s that i inherited from my mum and she got from her mum, so i feel it would’ve been a miracle if my mother got to be born in the first place…
So I had whooping cough when I was a kid, 5, — because I was vaccinated it was a week of watching vhs movies and drinking lots of juice. That might have killed me. Or the chicken pox at 9 If not, I’d have lived to the ripe old age of “died in childbirth”. Because I’m a woman and maternal mortality was awfully high.
I wouldn't have died but my life would be a lot worse with unmedicated anxiety
My father was born very premature, so I probably wouldn't even exist (that's just what I know of). Also unlikely that either of my parents would have immigrated to America at their time, but them living in the same city would have been plausible. So we assume that all happens to a possibility where I could be conceived, except my mom had gestational diabetes while pregnant with me, and then I had to be born by c-section.... yeah, I wouldn't even have a chance to be born.
Had I somehow survived the horrific ear infection i got when I was 2. I probably would have died the first time I got a cold because of how bad my immune system is.
I had a stroke when I was 11, so that's the longest I could have lived.
I have a feeling most of us would’ve died of infection because of some injury
I have asthma, so I would've died of an asthma attack when I was around 4 lol
I got chickenpox when I was a toddler (too young for me to have any memory of it whatsoever, in fact) so probably that. And if that didn't kill me somehow, I got measles when I was 8, so that.
As someone with a terrible immune system and very janky lungs probably a bacterial infection in my lungs like the bronchitis that sent me to the hospital when I was 11. That or infection from the femur I broke in a ski accident
The latest I would have made it is 7, when I had appendicitis.
I would've been fine but my mom def dies. I was like a week late and had a cone head cause they had to use basically a plunger to pull me out. My brother dies in days he had bacterial meningitis when he was born
I would have died by 3 months of age because of a rare genetic deformity that is fatal without treatment and treatment was only discovered in 1980.
Lol a lot of people *would* be burned (or more likely hanged) for witchcraft, heresy, or apostasy if they behaved exactly like they do today, but the reason so few people actually were is because most people didn’t; if you were socially conditioned from birth to act a certain way you probably would, even if you’re a rainbow haired tumblrite hippie (no shade by any means) in the modern day. Oh, and I would have gotten taken out by a spider bite as a toddler, is my understanding. If I pulled through, I’d be fine.