January 6 movie: Life Begins. This was a nice little melodrama starring Loretta Young, about women in a "waiting ward" in a "lying in hospital." Translation, they had a whole hospital just for ob/gyn and in that hospital was a ward where they stuck all the hugely pregnant women to wait for labor to begin. The movie was mainly interesting for the portrait of obstetrics in the 30s. It seemed really dangerous. I though that childbirth became much safer when they started using anesthesia, which was long before the 30s I thought. (Queen Victoria had anesthesia for her last few deliveries, and that was in the 1850s.) But in this movie all the women are terrified of dying during childbirth. The women were treated like invalids as soon as they got there, not allowed to walk at all, even if they were perfectly healthy and not even in labor yet. I wonder how much of that was accurate.
The best character was a modern woman who dressed like Isadora Duncan, proudly announced that she was single, quoted psychology, and had all the best lines. Like this exchange with a sweet, matronly woman on the ward:
"You never know, he might grow up to be President of the United States!"
"Well, maybe. But I'm going to try to raise him right."
Anesthesia makes childbirth less painful, but by no means safer - quite the opposite, since it has it's own risks!
I saw a documentary about the royal family on Discovery once, where they talked about queen vic getting it. It was considered quite revolutionary in those days, I think it caused a bit of a scandal even.
ps: sorry if I end up posting this several times, seems the server is acting up...
I read a book called Royal Confinements that talked about Victoria's use of anesthesia. The book said the same thing, that it was new and controversial. But I could swear the book said that the use of anesthesia made her (9!) deliveries safer. However it has been a long time since I read it.