I just thought I'd add this.
When the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, September 16, 1620, on its historic voyage to the New World, three of its 102 passengers were pregnant. Elizabeth Hopkins and Susanna White were each in their seventh month of pregnancy. Mary Norris Allerton was in her second or third month.
Their pregnancies must have been excruciatingly difficult. After a few days of clear weather, the Mayflower ran into "fierce storms" that lasted for six of the voyage's nine-and-a-half weeks. For days on end, passengers were confined to the low spaces between decks, while torrential winds blew away clothing and supplies and the ship tossed and rolled on the heavy seas.
While the ship was still at sea, Elizabeth Hopkins gave birth to a baby boy named Oceanus after his birthplace. Two weeks later, while the Mayflower was anchored off Cape Cod, Susanna White also had a baby boy. He was christened Peregrine, a name that means "pilgrim." Peregrine White would live into his eighties, but Oceanus Hopkins died during the Pilgrim's first winter in Plymouth. In the spring of 162l, Mary Norris Allerton died in childbirth; her baby was stillborn.
Childbirth in colonial America was a difficult and sometimes dangerous experience for women. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, between 1 percent and 1.5 percent of all births ended in the mother's death as a result of exhaustion, dehydration, infection, hemorrhage, or convulsions. Since the typical mother gave birth to between five and eight children, her lifetime chances of dying in childbirth ran as high as 1 in 8. This meant that if a woman had eight female friends, it was likely that one might die in childbirth.
Death in childbirth was sufficiently common that many colonial women regarded pregnancy with dread. In their letters, women often referred to childbirth as "the Dreaded apperation," "the greatest of earthly miserys," or "that evel hour I loock forward to with dread." Many, like New England poet Anne Bradstreet, approached childbirth with a fear of impending death. In a poem entitled "Before the Birth of One of Her Children," Bradstreet wrote,
How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,
How soon't may be thy lot to lose thy friend.
In addition to her anxieties about pregnancy, an expectant mother was filled with apprehensions about the death of her newborn child. The death of a child in infancy was far more common than it is today. In the healthiest seventeenth century communities, one infant in ten died before the age of five. In less healthy environments, three children in ten died before their fifth birthday. Puritan minister Cotton Mather saw eight of his fifteen children die before reaching the age of two. "We have our children taken from us," Mather cried out, "the Desire of our Eyes taken away with a stroke."
Given the high risk of birth complications and infant death, it is not surprising to learn that pregnancy was surrounded by superstitions. It was widely believed that if a mother looked upon a "horrible spectre" or was startled by a loud noise her child would be disfigured. If a hare jumped in front of her, her child was in danger of suffering a harelip. There was also fear that if the mother looked at the moon, her child might become a lunatic or sleepwalker. A mother's ungratified longings, it was thought, could cause an abortion or leave a mark imprinted on her child's body. At the same time, however, women were expected to continue to perform work until the onset of labor, since hard work supposedly made for an easier labor. Pregnant women regularly spun thread, wove clothing on looms, performed heavy lifting and carrying, milked cows, and slaughtered and salted down meat. -
DigitalHistory.uh.edu--------
For those that are interested, the many deaths of children and mothers carried on into the early part of the 20th Century. Early death, of both children and mothers was the main reason the life expectancy in the US was about 48 in 1900. Too many people think it is the medical discoveries that extended life expectancy to 75 or so, but it has only been in the last 30 or so years that the end of life has been extended significantly. Those who doubt me should look at the age of our Presidents at the time of their death, or the ages of famous people throughout history. Socrates was 70 when forced to drink poison, Plato was 80+, Aristotle 63, Hannibal over 60, Diogenes 88, Cicero 63, Augustus 75, Plutarch 70+, Tertullian about 80, Constantine 64, Constantine's mother about 80, St. Augustine 76, Justinian 80+. Basically, since recorded history, once a man reached adulthood and didn't die in a war, he had a reasonable chance of seeing his mid-60s, and once a woman had her last child, she may also have lived as long.
