Catharina Schrader

IN THE entry about the couple who posed for vanity photos of their home birthing experience, I write:

Women have been midwives for most of history, and obviously many have done their work with remarkable skill, energy and care. But the feminist halo that surrounds the midwife, who is often depicted as the victim of a male takeover of the business, is an interesting subject. The story is more complicated than it appears. Many midwives did a small number of deliveries per year and thus were unable to attain technical competence. Catharina Schrader was a Dutch midwife who delivered between 3,000 and 4,000 babies, with very low infant and maternal mortality for the time, between the years of 1693 and 1740. She was more of a professional than the typical midwife of the time, having been the wife of a surgeon, whom she helped in his practice. Upon her husband’s death, she took up midwifery to support her six children. Her diaries, published as The Mother and Child Were Saved (Rodopi, 1984), make up one of the most detailed accounts by a European midwife of that era. In her journals, she rails against some of the other midwives, referring to “dreadful know-nothings,” a “messy bungler” and midwives who “tortured” their patients. It is considered unseemly today to reproach anyone who is involved in home birthing, but she was free with her criticisms at that time. Schrader, a devout Calvinist who prayed to God for the “wretched that I have to see” and those who are “in misery and need,” also referred to some of the unmarried women whom she delivered as “whores.” I can only imagine what she would make of the vanity and eroticism of these birthing photos.

Here is the account of one of her cases, in which another midwife had failed to realize that a mother was pregnant with twins. It is a sad and moving story and helps explain why Schrader constantly prayed for assistance with her work:

671. 1701 fetched to Driesum to a weaver’s wife, after a previous midwife had delivered a baby the day before. Had to fetch her the day after again. Found that there was still another child, but could not help the woman with all her torturing. Went away [other midwife.] Then I was fetched. Found that the child [lay] with his stomach [first.] Turned it quickly. A living child. And [the] woman completely well. But the second day the woman was alone in the house; the people were milking. Then a strange man came in, who asked the woman in childbed whether he could light a tobacco pipe, which he did. After that, the woman got such an attack of fits, that three men could not hold her. Together with periods without speech. Died the same day. One questioned whether the person who had come in there had committed murder. The Lord knows best how.

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