I was woken up by pounding on the door. My father opened it to see Oswyn Malison, breathing hard. Oswyn said, “My sister Hannah just went into labor. Mrs Rawson wants Sussana there.” My father called back into our sleeping room, “Sussana, you’re wanted.”

I knew that Hannah, a weaver and the village shepherd’s wife, was heavily pregnant. Mrs Rawson, wife of the blacksmith, was the village midwife, having both the experience of several children and helping at the birthing of a few dozen others. If she sent Oswyn Malison to get me, she apparently felt it was time to get my hands bloody too.

I called back to the doorway. “Do I need to bring anything? A pain recipe or something?”

Oswyn replied, “No. Just come.”

I hurriedly put on decent clothes instead of my nightclothes and rushed out to follow him. I held the front of my dress up and hurried as fast as I could.

“Is she at her cottage or at your parents’ cottage?”

“Ours. If it was her cottage, they’d have to kick Duncane out his own house, and he’d be sleeping in the sheepcote.”

When we got to Malison’s, the back room had been completely closed off with a blanket and Duncane Lyfelde, Hannah’s husband, was pacing, head down, in the main room. He looked up as I came through the door and said, “I’ve done a hundred lambings, but it’s different when it’s your own.” I nodded. I could hear heavy breathing coming from the back room and the murmuring of a few women. Osywn called out, “I’ve brought Sussana Beckworth.” “In here Sussana” came Mrs Rawson’s authoritative voice. “If you are going to get into healing, it’s time you started attending childbirths.”

I pushed back the blanket and stepped into the back room. It was ill-lit by candles and smelled of sage. There was a low fire in the hearth, a warmed caudle in a wooden cup on a table nearby. The one window was open, but partially covered by another blanket. Hannah was seated on a birthing stool, with Mrs Rawson sitting on a chair beside her. Hannah’s mother was there, as well as several other village mothers crowded into the room.

“Come here, Sussana! Put your hand on Hannah’s belly, right here.” I came over and looked at Hannah’s flushed face. She grimaced but nodded, so I put my hand on her belly next to Mrs Rawson’s hand. “Remember what you feel. Now put your hand here.” She pushed my hand to another part of Hannah’s belly. “You are trying to feel where the head is and where the feet are. We want the head to come out first.”

“It better not be a lamb, or Duncane has got some explaining to do.” grunted Hannah.

“Yes. Now keep your hand there and tell me when you notice a squeezing or contraction.” I felt one contraction, then another a few minutes later. “That is Hannah’s body trying to put the baby in the right position to be pushed out. Feel Hannah’s hips. They need to spread for the baby. We don’t want Hannah trying to push the baby out until the baby is in the right position and its head is already starting to appear. Now look down there, girl.”

Hannah suddenly yelled, and her mother put a wet cloth on her forehead. “Don’t look up there! Her mother will take care of that. I want you to pay attention to what is happening at the other end. Elspet, give your daughter a drink.”

Duncane called from the other room “Is Hannah alright?”

Mrs Rawson called back, “She’s fine. We’ll tell you if you are needed.”

Three hours later, after much huffing, puffing and a little screaming, Mrs Rawson wrapped a new baby girl in clothes, pushed past the blanket into the other room and handed Duncane his new daughter. “Father, see there is your child. God give you much joy with it or take it speedily to his bliss.” Duncane seemed entranced. I was glad he wasn’t disappointed that it wasn’t a boy.

My job, apparently, was to clean up the mess on the floor, the straw, the birthing chair and Hannah while the other women helped her up out of the chair and into the bed.

A half hour later, Mrs Rawson called me out of the house.

“That was a very easy birth. Don’t go thinking they will all be this easy. Duncane and Hannah knew what was going on because they’ve seen sheep do it. They can probably tell you horror stories of what they have had to do when a lambing is bad and the lamb is coming out the wrong way. You didn’t shirk at the cleanup on this one, and I heard that you stayed up all night with that old woman who died. That’s how I know you’ll not faint and be useless when needs be. I assume you want to learn?”

“Yes. Thank you, Mrs Rawson.” I replied.

“Good.”

I looked at her. “Mrs Rawson. Why is human childbirth so painful? It seems easier with animals.”

She looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. The Bible says that God made it so because he was angry at Eve’s sin. But Christ died and washed away our sins, so that should have made childbirth easy again.” She sighed. “We deal with what is, not what is in a book. All the books on childbearing I’ve ever seen were written by men who’ve never seen it.”

She looked pensive for a moment, then smiled. “Now go on home and tell your mother there’s a new girl baby in the village. She’ll probably get some seamstress business in baby gifts and might want to prepare.”

Although I’d lost my first patient, it seems that how I acted had generated some respect among older women in the village. That felt good and relieved a bit of the pain of my failure.

It was midday. The sun came out from behind a cloud and the world seemed happy. I started home with news for my mother and a vegetable garden to tend waiting for me.

Mathilda Writes a Letter (September 15, 1643)

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