Growing Pains
NO MATTER THE SEASON, babies came to be born the moment they were due. Among the young women few, if any, had ever witnessed a birth, never mind been part of a team involved in the delivery of a baby. Therefore this task fell upon the two older women, Ute and Berta Halberstamm, who had seen many births during their lives. They became the saviors of many a young woman in distress.
The lucky ones, dropping their babies like cookies on a sheet, made do with the help of their husbands or a kind neighbor. However, woe to those women whose babies arrived in a breach position at delivery; whose labor was irregular, or whose labor did not begin until a tearing of the placenta announced a dry birth. Those were the women who needed Ute and Berta more than anything. None other had as much knowledge about birthing, medications and remedies to ease the pains of labor as Ute had.
“Get your wife to my house, Master Martin, we have a problem!” became a regular call at the Meininger’s house.
As soon as the call came, Ute gathered her tools, towels, stones to be heated, a pair of ferocious looking tongs and her huge birthing apron. There were times when Ute directed her step to the upper village, as Berta was helping a woman in the house next to her. While away on these errands of mercy, which stole many hours, even days, from their lives, their work lay fallow. Their children and men perfunctorily performed their chores, but both women soon concluded that they were incapable of tending to hundreds of women in various stages of pregnancy and delivery.
“We must find another way to deal with the birthing,” said Ute, as she tiredly trudged toward home with her friend Berta. “As much as I love to bring babies into this world, I can’t go on like this. The young women seem to produce babies like Apple Kuchen.”
“I know,” concurred Berta, “I am forever tired and my work remains undone, but what can we do? We are all the poor things have in their hardest moments of life.” Ute had thought about the problem for some time now and believed the time to act had arrived.
“We will bring it before the elders. Perhaps they can send for doctors and midwives from Hessen. But in the meantime, we must find a few bright young women and train them as best we can. Perhaps, if we each take two or three along to the birthings and teach them, we can at least gain help and have more time for our own things.”
On a few occasions Ute and Berta had taken their daughters along to a delivery. However, their girls were needed more than ever to cover their absences. Moreover, the harsh realities of births, sometimes ending in injury to mother or child or resulting in the death of either, had preyed heavily on Karin’s sensibilities.
“It was months before she got over the death of Johanna Kleiber,” revealed Beate. “The girl was only nineteen when she died. The baby was enormous, and she died, trying valiantly to give him life. Karin still shivers when she sees a knife, for the deacon came and cut the baby from her dead body. She was too young and sensitive to have witnessed such a dreadful deed.”
“Giving life is a deadly business,” mused Ute. “So many young, healthy women die trying. What is your count? I think we have lost almost one in six. So often all goes well and then they die of a fever, or the little ones don’t thrive.”
“I know how discouraging it is. I would rather plant some flowers. It is much more cheerful,” said Berta gloomily.
“And yet,” Ute chimed in brightly, “when all goes well and I hold the little ones all clean and swaddled in my arms before giving them to their mother – then the world is right and God is with me.”