“HEY! I don’t care how healthy it is or that the entire nation of Japan still eats it while pregnant, I OWN YOU and I said NO SUSHI!”—King Baby
How much more exciting for the Victorian woman who is enceinte. She received an immediate call to nonstop action. Her mothering began immediately. Wrote the French doctor André Théodore Brochard, “When a woman becomes pregnant she no longer belongs to herself. She belongs entirely to the being she carries within her, and whose existence has been trusted to her by God.”
But fear not. The little tyrant who now owns your mind and body is a benign ruler. Though you will suffer much under his regime, your rewards will be manifold, especially if you handle this pregnancy as a Victorian woman would. There will be naps, oh so bounteous naps, no one snatching your brie, and of course you can still drink!
Q: Stop. No. You most certainly cannot drink. That’s injurious and foolish.
A: Absolutely. Allow me to legally state here that I do not encourage alcohol consumption while pregnant. To say otherwise would be just silly and a great big wide invitation for lawsuits.
But.
Waking up on the floor with no pants and a strange doll next to you: the tragic refrain of drunk babies.
You might be surprised to learn how recently drinking while pregnant became the grievous atrocity we now consider it. It was only toward the later end of the nineteenth century, during a health craze for abstention from all things stimulating, from pickles to porter, that drinking while pregnant became unpopular.
The editor of American Motherhood wrote in 1903 of the changing attitude toward drink: “The baby may sleep better because the mother drinks beer, but it is the semi-stupor of intoxication. In beer-drinking countries the physicians assert that among the women who are constant beer drinkers it is difficult to find a sober baby.”
Even then the concern wasn’t whether alcohol would impede a child’s physical or mental development while in the womb or on the breast. The problem was you might breed a generation of dopey drunk little babies who would continue the habit into adulthood.
We know that constant consumption of alcohol is dangerous to both mother and baby. It’s dangerous to anyone. But as for the threat of mild alcohol consumption causing birth defects, it may not be as high as you fear. A twenty-first-century study from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism estimated for every one thousand births in America, ten children will be born with alcohol-related birth defects. That is 1 percent, but it is a savage number no matter how small.
However, the NIAAA also studied risk factors for the mothers of these babies and found that most were already severely alcoholic before they were pregnant and carried their alcoholism into their pregnancy.
We’re not talking about women who sip a glass of Pinot with a nice dinner late in their pregnancy, but people who are addicts and in severe distress. Westerners have never been good with moral gray areas, especially regarding babies. It’s possible we abstain from occasional alcohol when pregnant today because we misunderstand the degree of danger it represents. Then again, we care so much for baby that we’re willing to do, or not do, anything to give him even the smallest extra layer of protection.
Q: Didn’t women of Victorian times feel the same way?
A: Well, yes, as much as they could. This is difficult to dwell on, so I’ll try to be brief. Victorians, generally, tried not to grow as attached to their babies, born or unborn, as we do. No matter their rank or station, Victorians took it as a given that nearly everything in the world was lying in wait to snuff out the life of their baby, and that those evil forces would often succeed. It didn’t mean those mothers loved any less, or cried any softer, or were any less broken when they miscarried from malnutrition and overwork, or lost a child to croup. It just means they weren’t nearly as surprised.
There were so many threats to babies and pregnancies in the minds of the Victorian mother, from a rough carriage ride to being startled by an ugly nun. Wondering whether or not a drink of ale would hurt a fetus, well, that is a luxury people with plenty of clean water and reliable medical care get to suffer. Water, you must remember, was a crapshoot. Literally. Before the nineteenth century, drinking water very often shared underground tables with wastewater. The processes used to make alcohol killed much of the bacteria that caused cholera, dysentery, and countless other ills.
For most of Western history, pregnant women drank alcohol. Not to excess; a lady didn’t want to appear a sloppy drunk. But beer, mead, ale, wine, and liqueurs were simply part of the human diet, as well as a much-relied-on medication.
Victorian women wanted to have safe pregnancies, same as us. It’s just that back then… that probably included a goodly dose of malt liquor. In an 1858 edition of the medical journal Transactions, a Dr. D. L. M’Gugin wrote,
I have during the past year been highly gratified with the results of malt liquor, during pregnancy, as in lactation. Several patients who had been thin and emaciated, acquired not only strength and vigor, but were relieved of their sufferings. One lady who had lost three children during their infancy, and who was spare, thin, and pale, found herself pregnant for the fourth time. She became dejected… and was advised to use the malt beer, and in a short time found herself with more strength and health than ever before.
Dr. M’Gugin explained that the patient put on weight, had a healthy birth, and was able to nurse her child for the first time, who in turn was growing strong.
The malt liquor the doctor recommended was of a “class of beer prepared from the hops, with a large amount of malt, and in an active state of effervescence. In this form we derive the benefits of the tonic properties of the hop, the nutrient principles of the malt, and the soothing qualities of the carbonic acid.”
“Golly, Sue, if your nerves are bad you should lay off the whiskey and smoke some nice soothing tobacco.”
Q: So you recommend I take my prenatal vitamin with a forty of Schlitz?
A: I would like to remind you that sarcasm is the language of hate. Of course not. But I am telling you that for the entirety of history, all over the world, pregnant women have drunk alcohol in moderation and safely delivered children. I can understand if you don’t feel comfortable joining their ranks. In fact, I should officially tell you not to. If for no other reason than you seem argumentative and litigious.
Besides, as we’re about to learn, plain old alcohol was positively one of the most boring substances Victorians used to soothe the discomforts of pregnancy.
Q: What sort of discomforts? What did they use for medicine?
A: The list of minor complaints suffered by the expecting mother is near endless. Let me just focus on two of the more private concerns.
Constipation
We may not like to talk about it, but the inability to pass regular, comfortable poops can cause an already uncomfortable mother-to-be to feel like she literally has a stick up her posterior. Modern pregnant women are reluctant to take laxatives or stool softeners, lest the medication cause the baby to be born with runny poop (it will be) or a proclivity to play in toilet bowls (it’s going to). There are many reasons a pregnant woman is subject to constipation. Less physical activity, increased progesterone slowing the movement of the digestive tract, and pressure of the womb on the lower intestine. Well, those are the current popular theories, anyway. Other causes have fallen to history, though they may be just as much to blame.
Dr. Pratt’s Rectal Dilator for daily use to restore regularity, 1889.
The Water-Cure in Pregnancy and Childbirth, written by Joel Shew in 1849, blames this new “soft white flour” that’s become all the rage. Which, unless you’re a big hippie with a spelt fetish, is the basis of all the bread products you eat today. From Shew: “Superfine flour is, I hold, the greatest of all causes of constipation. No woman, if she can have brown bread, and occasionally an injection [enema], need ever suffer from constipation of the bowels.”
John Epps, who wrote Constipation: Its Theory and Cure in
1854 (which he lovingly dedicated to his wife), doesn’t think the problem is as simple as bread and biscuits. The reason pregnant women get constipated is because their uncontrolled sexual arousal is stealing the muscle power of the rectum.
The over-excitement of the genital organs by sexual or other excess, produces, by exhausting the nervous energy, a loss of expulsive power in the muscles of the rectum, thus causing the rectum not readily to respond to the stimulus of the fecal matter. Accumulations are thus caused in the rectum and constipation is manifested.
And somewhere, Mrs. Epps sits with her face in her hands, caught between pride in her husband’s publication and the shame of him subtly revealing to the world that she is horny and constipated.
As they are today, laxatives and purgatives were frowned upon during pregnancy. Doctors recommended “auxiliary” treatment. You’re welcome to try enemas and rectal dilators, but the most common method of removing true fecal impaction is still the one used today. That is to say, a crooked finger. It’s going to put up a fight, so be ready for that. It’s like a coal deposit up there. And though we do not generally embrace modern methods on this journey to parenthood, you will find no judgment here if you choose to use the very modern invention of latex gloves during the process. Or even those thick black rubber gloves that evil scientists wear in movies to handle plutonium.
“Auxiliary” treatment for severe constipation. You’re probably going to want to roll up those sleeves.
Constipation is torment enough, but it is also one of the direct causes of our next affliction. Luckily, this one has a much less invasive treatment. Technically illegal, actually. But only by the laws of a meddlesome twenty-first-century government. Back in the day when people were trusted to care for themselves, a tetch of hemorrhoid heroin wasn’t going to do anyone any harm.
Hemorrhoids
Don’t strain so much—you’re likely to pop a blood vessel! In your tushy. That’s all hemorrhoids are, really: swollen and irritated blood vessels that poof up and protrude from the anus. The best Victorian cure comes from Mary Ries Melendy. Trust a lady doctor to prescribe treatments that don’t fool around! She promises you’ll find relief naturally, just by regularly “anointing” the afflicted area with a homemade tea made of chamomile and four poppy-heads.
The most common varieties of hemorrhoids in pregnant women. Or, if you’re squeamish, an aerial map of some islands in the South Pacific.
Q: That sounds pleasant enough. But I can’t find “poppy-head tea” at the grocery store or pharmacy.
A: Oh, they’re not usually stocked with the other teas. Pharmacies do have them, but they’re in pill form now and they’re called “opiates.” Or have been given snazzy names like OxyContin, Percocet, Demerol… even just plain old morphine! And—bonus—they are absorbed fantastically through rectal tissue! Even better than through oral ingestion, some modern studies say. And if your hemorrhoids are a real terror, there is a very powerful distillation of poppy-head extract that is called “heroin.” It’s extra refined so as to do its job extra well!
Poppy-heads, circa 1853.
Not many pharmacies carry that nowadays, though. You might need to go someplace else. I can’t tell you exactly where, so it’s a bit of a treasure hunt! Find the most decrepit part of any large city, and just wait around a bit after dark. You can ask passersby if they know where to buy some, but if you’re lucky someone might walk right up and offer it to you! Bring cash. Modern heroin distributors are usually very firm on cash only.
Q: You want me to go to the city and ask around for heroin. I… I’ve been reading the back of the book and you’re not remotely a doctor of any kind, are you?
Highly refined “black tar” poppy-heads as confiscated during a police raid, circa 2005.
A: Which is precisely why you need my unbiased perspective. Now, why would you balk at a small adventure like your search for uncut poppy dust? An expecting mother should be keeping her brain and body active! Also, if police should approach you and ask your business, simply point to your belly and tell them you’re pregnant and need heroin to rub on your swollen rectum.
Q: I’m sorry. I can’t see that ending well. I’m going to use Preparation H.
A: You’re just going to swagger into a drugstore and plop a tube of chemical anus cream on the counter for all to see, huh? I wouldn’t imagine any self-respecting mother-to-be could be so brazen, but if you don’t mind the stares, go right ahead. Just remember, your behavior is already imprinting on your baby, with potentially disastrous results.
Q: I mean, you have, like, no qualifications whatsoever that I can find… Back up. What do you mean, “imprinting with disastrous results”?
A: Your child, from the moment of conception, is exposed to every emotion, sound, sight, and thought you experience. And all of these things have an enormous impact on who they will become. Or as Melendy says: “That a mother may, during the period of gestation, exercise great influence, by her own mental and physical action, either unwittingly or purposely in such a way as to determine the traits and tendencies of her offspring, is now a common belief among all intelligent people.”
You are capable of inflicting harm on your baby—worse harm than all the malt liquor and butt heroin in the world—just by going about your daily life. “There is no limit to the evil a mother may entail upon her unborn child; while on the other hand it is impossible to picture the happy results her efforts may accomplish.”
This is what I meant when I said it is a mistake of the modern age to believe that your only task for the next nine months is balanced nutrition and learning to assemble an Ikea crib. Your perfect child (or degenerate monster) is forming from the power of your own mind from day one.
Q: That’s really unsettling. How do I make my body a happy and nourishing place for my baby to grow?
A: First, surround yourself with beauty. The walls of your bedchamber should be filled with art that encourages noble contemplation. Pastoral scenes, nothing jarring. Try statuary. Send someone to that place that sells lawn statues and fill your room with pretty ladies pouring jars of water or babies peeing. Nothing distressing or ugly should cross your path. Under no circumstances should you expose yourself to dirty laundry piles or toilets that need cleaning.
You don’t want to birth a child who relishes squalor, do you? This comes from Dr. John West, the author of Maidenhood and Motherhood, or Ten Phases of a Woman’s Life in 1886:
[The pregnant woman’s] chamber should have a southern exposure, if possible. This room should be kept free from all confusion of furniture, and, above all things, should have a cheerful look. If pictures and other ornamental works of art can be arranged about the walls, so much the better. Everything of a gloomy cast or suggestive of discomfort and disorder, should be carefully excluded. The mind of the wife will take on the impression of what the eyes reveal, and the state of the mind will be surely impressed upon the child’s mind and disposition.
Q: Think beautiful thoughts in a beautiful environment, birth beautiful baby. Got it.
A: You most certainly do not “got it” if you think it’s that simple. You only know of the things you must embrace, but the list of things you must avoid is ever so much more important. And longer! For instance, what do you think causes birthmarks, physical deformity, and children who grow up to be criminals?
The “lying-in” room where Isaac Newton was born. Proving that to incubate a man of true distinction you may need to forgo the slavish luxury of a bed.
Q: Various inherited and environmental factors, some of which are not yet completely understood?
A: No. Blame not God nor Nature for your own necromancy. They come from your body and your mind, Mother, specifically your lack of control over both.
A mother’s emotions can be transmitted to the mind and body of the developing fetus. Listen to these examples of “Mother’s Markings” or “Maternal Impressions,” as reported by Thomas Shannon in 1904’s Nature’s Secrets Revealed, and by Edward Bliss Foo
te in 1889’s Plain Home Talk.
And try not to be shocked by them; that will defeat the whole purpose.
Deformed Lip—A pregnant woman fell into a violent passion; she bled at the nose, and wiping the blood from her lip, bore a child wanting a lip.
Form of Lizard on Breast—A prospective mother became frightened at a lizard jumping into her bosom. She bore a child with an unnatural appendage exactly resembling a lizard, growing from its breast, adhering by the head and neck.
Fire Mark—A woman, absent from home, became alarmed by seeing a large fire in the direction of her own house, and bore a child with a distinct mark of a flame upon its forehead.
Bear Baby—A woman gave birth to a child covered with hair, and having the claws of a bear. This was attributed to her beholding the images and pictures of bears hung up in the palace of the Ursini family, to which she belonged.
Lobster Craving—A woman who had longed for a lobster, brought forth a child resembling one of those animals.
Q: C’mon. Most newborns look a little like lobsters. Squashed lobsters.
A: Shhh! Can you continue your flippancy in the face of this tragic tale told by Dr. West? He tells us of a pregnant woman who was
compelled to pass a grog-shop, and as she came to it she heard a voice that was strangely like her husband’s, singing a ribald song. She was so struck with astonishment that she involuntarily looked in at the door. She beheld her husband in a state of hilarious intoxication. This was but a few weeks before the birth of her child.
Lo and behold, the baby grew into a toddler with all the characteristics of a drunkard. The child, he tells us, had no coordination in the movements of the lower limbs. “The child’s gait was heavy and insecure—a regular drunken reel or stagger. The speech was not only thick, incoherent, and rambling, but had all the phenomena of exhilaration and excitement characteristic of the earlier stages of intoxication.”
Ungovernable Page 4