Um, YES, it is that difficult, even now. I have no idea why people seem to think that just because maternal/infant mortality has declined, that it's nonexistent.
It still isn't guaranteed now, by any shot. I had two miscarriages before a medical condition was diagnosed and treated. It's easily treated, but was unknown back then. With treatment, I eventually got pregnant and had a healthy if premature child...thanks to an emergency C-section for a separated placenta which saved her from being stillborn and transfusions for me. Back then, my baby would have suffocated without ever being born and I would have bled to death in a matter of minutes.
My husband's previous wife would have died from her first pregnancy (breech birth, malformed uterus, baby couldn't be turned and needed an emergency C).
My best friend lost her first child at five months. The only reason she was able to carry the next three to term was because the doctor was able to give her anti-contraction medication.
My SIL had(has) an incompetent cervix; she lost her first child, the second was born at five months and died from a malformed heart; the third and fourth were live, healthy births, though both were premature and she carried to term only because the doctor put her on absolute bed rest and sewed up her cervix so the babies *couldn't* come out.
...and that's just off the top of my head. Miscarriages are very, very common, especially in early days of pregnancy, and *particularly* if there are health problems with the fetus, which might well have been likely for Henry and his wives. You couldn't even correct or test for a simple Rh difference back then!
If you want a sobering women's history lesson, get into genealogy. Some men had three, four, even five wives, all of whom died in childbirth, and the number of stillborn babies and those which died young is just heartbreaking. But that was the norm.
Some of it was due to total lack of medical care. Some was just due to unsanitary conditions, poor food, lack of equipment we take for granted today -- no formula, for example, no bottles, no incubators for children born early, no central heating or even guaranteed uncontaminated water. Add to that frequent conditions which may have interfered with the production of breast milk (lack of food during years when crops failed, etc.) and you see why infant mortality rates were astonishing in Tudor England.
Plus, if you really read English history, you'll understand why Henry was so frantic for a male heir. Granted, he got obsessed about it, but he had some reason. The last time the English people had had a ruling queen before Queen Mary (Henry's daughter) was the Empress Maude (Matilda), daughter of Henry *I*, son of William the Conqueror. Although she was Henry's designated heir (her only legitimate brother and only other legitimate sibling was killed in a shipwreck a few years before Henry's death), another spurious claim was fielded by a cousin, Stephen of Blois. The result was 20 years of civil war. England had just been through the terrible struggles of the Wars of the Roses; in fact, Henry VIII's own mother, Elizabeth of York, had a more legitimate claim to the throne than his father, but there was no way anyone would have supported having a *woman* on the throne.
So, Henry's obsessions make much more sense when viewed through the lens of English history.
In fact, probably the *only* reason Mary managed to stay on the throne (thus paving the way for Elizabeth) was that 1) the only other near claimants were also female, 2) she was the daughter of Katherine, with ties to Spain, and 3) she immediately married Philip of Spain, which at the time was one of the most powerful countries in the world. It helped her that between Henry and his father, they'd murdered nearly every other Yorkist claimant to the throne, too.
However, that resistance to women in authority also why I love the fact that Elizabeth I kicked all their assumptions in the nads. :D I've found it hilarious that, given what happened with Maude/Matilda (whose son, by the way, DID inherit the throne as Henry II), the best-known and most successful English monarchs...have been largely women. :D
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pivokocka
13 years ago
I thought I read somewhere that this could have been due to congenital syphilis.
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allmappedout
13 years ago
Haha, all this chat going on and it's the tiny comment by pivokocka that's the right one! Yes, i believe that Henry did have Congenital syphilis. It amazes me that the whole history of the throne and religion of britain could have been different if they'd taken antibiotics.
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ignore these four words
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