Influenced by movies and TV dramas, many people think that pregnant women in ancient times gave birth while lying down, but in fact, pregnant women in ancient times generally gave birth while sitting.

In the Treatise on the Causes and Symptoms of Various Diseases and Symptoms of Diseases Approaching Childbirth written by Chao Yuanfang and others in the Sui Dynasty, there was a very specific description of the postures adopted by pregnant women during childbirth at that time: "Women give birth in either sitting or lying down." In other words, women can give birth in either a sitting or lying down position.

However, the preferred position for pregnant women in ancient times was sitting delivery, which is called "vertical delivery". In addition to "sitting", standing, squatting and kneeling are also considered vertical delivery.

In other words, in ancient times, pregnant women gave birth in many different positions, including "sitting", "standing", "kneeling", and "squatting".

In vertical delivery, at least two people assist, one of whom holds the pregnant woman's waist from behind. The Treatise on the Origin and Symptoms of Various Diseases states: "If the woman is giving birth while sitting, she must sit upright, with someone beside her to hold her waist and ribs, and to hold her so that she does not tilt, so that the baby can move smoothly."

Compared with horizontal delivery, vertical delivery has obvious advantages and can greatly reduce dystocia.

Wang Yan's "Wai Tai Mi Yao·Preface to Childbirth and Lactation" in the Tang Dynasty quoted "Luan Gong Tiao Qi Fang" and recorded: At that time, there was a man whose one sister and two daughters all died of dystocia. Later, when his daughter-in-law was about to give birth, she went to the mountains to seek guidance from a master.

According to the advice of this "obstetrician and gynecologist" in the mountains, this person cleaned up a room and used it as a temporary delivery room for his daughter-in-law: "Three or four pieces of linen were laid out, and a rope was tied to a wooden scale to measure the height. The child was allowed to squat under the armpits and lean on the scale. A blanket was placed underneath to prevent the child from accidentally falling on the grass and getting hurt."

She gave birth in a standing position, holding on to the hanging crossbar, and successfully delivered the baby.

This vertical delivery can be seen in the Dazu Rock Carvings in Chongqing.

In the stone carving of "Suffering during Childbirth", a woman stands behind the pregnant woman, and a midwife squats in front of her, tying her clothes and rolling up her sleeves to prepare for delivery. This group of stone carvings was carved in the Southern Song Dynasty and is an important source of information for studying the delivery methods of ancient pregnant women.

In ancient times, pregnant women often adopted different delivery methods according to the changes in the labor process. For example, in the Song Dynasty, pregnant women mostly gave birth in a sitting position, but other methods were also used.

Yang Kanghou, a medical scientist in the Song Dynasty, said in his "Ten Pregnancy Theories": "When a child is about to be born, the mother is tired and has been sitting on a chair for a long time, which will hinder the birth path." At this time, the pregnant woman should be asked to stand up: "A towel should be tied to a high place, and the mother should climb up with her hands", and then "gently bend her feet to sit, the birth canal will relax, and the child will be born."

Vertical delivery is not only an option for pregnant women in ancient China, but also in foreign countries.

For example, there is a relief in the palace of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, which depicts the childbirth scene of the last queen Cleopatra. The queen adopted the "kneeling position" in vertical childbirth.

I have to say, life is really hard for being a woman!

The ancients considered childbirth to be "unclean". In the early days, it was even taboo to give birth at home, and men, including husbands, had to avoid it. In ancient times, it was not like today when you can go to the hospital to give birth, so a temporary delivery room was often set up for childbirth.

So, where is the delivery room located? How is it arranged? It is different in different dynasties.

Wang Chong of the Eastern Han Dynasty recorded in Lun Heng Si Taboos that during the Qin and Han dynasties, a thatched shed was usually built next to a tomb or road as a temporary delivery room. Before childbirth, pregnant women were moved into the shed, and could only return home with their babies after a full month of birth.

Many mothers often answer their children's questions, "Where did I come from?" by saying "I picked it up on the roadside" to deceive their children. The origin of this context is related to the fact that early delivery rooms were set up outdoors. If a child was born in a temporary delivery room on the roadside, wouldn't it be "picked up on the roadside"?

The temporary delivery room was simply equipped with a layer of straw or wheat straw on the ground as a delivery bed. Therefore, giving birth in ancient times was called "sitting on the grass", "on the grass", "on the grass", or "falling on the grass".

When laying straw, the ancients also chanted corresponding spells. According to the "Eighth Law of Prohibiting Straw" in Chen Ziming's "Furen Daquan Liangfang·Zuoyuemen", the spell in the Song and Yuan dynasties was: "Iron iron clang clang, it is not what you deserve. The king got copper with one word and iron with another. Mother and son are born with iron, and they are both despised by iron. Hurry up and obey the command."

During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, pregnant women mostly gave birth at home, which may be related to Xiao Baojuan, the Eastern Hun Hou.

Xiao Baojuan had the habit of traveling around, but he didn't want to be seen. Before each trip, he would send people to drive away the common people along the way. Families of pregnant women had to convert the temporary delivery rooms on the roadside into their homes. "Southern History: Qi Benji Xia" records that a pregnant woman did not leave the roadside delivery room, and was tragically "cut open to see the gender of the baby" by Xiao Baojuan.

Since then, the custom of setting up temporary delivery rooms on the roadside has changed.

However, no matter whether giving birth at home or outside, no matter whether giving birth while kneeling or sitting, one thing has never changed: giving birth for women in ancient times was really like going through the gates of hell.

The saying "sons rush to life, mothers rush to death" is not just a joke.

Even the empresses of Emperor Yuan Baoju of the Western Wei Dynasty and Emperor Kangxi died of dystocia. It is conceivable how dangerous it was for women to give birth in ancient times.

At that time, having a child was really a matter of fate, and it could easily result in two deaths.

Apart from anything else, just an abnormal fetal position can cause the mother to be in danger of death.

Even if the baby is born smoothly, the mother is not completely out of danger because she still has to go through two hurdles: postpartum hemorrhage and puerperal fever.

During the delivery process, the placenta and fetal membranes will be delivered together with the birth of the fetus. If the placenta and fetal membranes are not delivered completely and some remain in the uterus, the uterus will cause heavy bleeding due to poor contraction.

Even if the mother is normal and there is nothing wrong with her on the day of delivery, it is possible that her immunity is reduced due to exhaustion during the delivery process, and puerperal fever is induced by wound infection.

Under the medical conditions in ancient times, once a woman contracted puerperal fever, she was basically doomed.

Even in modern times, difficult childbirth can be life-threatening.

Therefore, it is never too important to attach too much importance to having children.

It is inevitable for women to suffer from labor pains during their first pregnancy, and Jiang Xue is no exception. However, she is already in a good situation. From the moment she became pregnant, she has been preparing for childbirth under the guidance of professionals, and now it is finally coming in handy.

The contractions were relatively mild at first, but they became unbearable when the delivery approached. Fortunately, they did not last long, and Jiang Xue gave birth to the baby smoothly.

Compared with those mothers who suffer pain all day and all night long, Jiang Xue is already very happy.

The child’s birth time was exactly as Jiang Feng said.

Qu Wenhua, who became a father, was as happy as a child. He took out a big bag of red envelopes that he had prepared long ago and gave them to everyone he met.

Seeing this, Jiang Feng touched his wife's belly and said with a smile: "Wife, you are not nervous now, right? You are like my sister, you didn't have to suffer too much and gave birth to the baby smoothly."

Huang Lingwei naturally believed in her husband's magical predictive ability. She smiled and said, "I feel like I'm about to get an injection. Before the needle goes in, no matter how much mental preparation I put in, I will be nervous and scared. Once the needle is really inserted, this nervousness and fear should be gone."

Jiang Feng gave her a warm smile and said, "Wife, I will personally go to the delivery room to accompany you when the time comes. Don't worry, I'm here with you!"

Huang Lingwei smiled when she heard this. With her husband taking care of her, she was not afraid of anything.

…

As the saying goes, "Once bitten by a snake, one will fear ropes for ten years." Sometimes the disaster itself is not that scary, but what is scary is the serious harm it causes to people.

Liang Xiaowei, 33 years old this year, has been hurt in love once. That emotional injury caused him very serious consequences and made him no longer believe in love.

Liang Xiaowei was born in an ordinary family. Because he was handsome and had good academic performance, he was very popular among girls during his school days. In his second year of high school, he secretly fell in love with the most beautiful girl in class.

The two worked hard for a common goal and were admitted to a 985 university in China together. During their college years, they were well-known as a "fairy couple" in the school, making countless single people envious.

Liang Xiaowei originally thought that after graduating from college, they would work in the same city, then get married, have children, and live an ideal life.

As a result, he guessed the beginning but not the ending.

After graduating from university, Liang Xiaowei and his first love did work in the same city, and they were even at the stage of discussing marriage. But at this critical moment, his first love, who had sworn to marry him, betrayed their love and chose to throw herself into the arms of a rich second-generation man.

To be honest, Liang Xiaowei collapsed when he heard the news. He couldn't bear the blow at all, and he couldn't understand why his first love girlfriend suddenly changed!

He insisted on an explanation.

So, his first girlfriend gave him an explanation and said the following to him:

"Wei Ge, before I left school, I really loved you with all my heart and thought about spending my whole life with you. But after leaving school and starting to get in touch with society, I realized how naive and ridiculous those thoughts were.

With a family like yours and mine, if we get married, we definitely can't afford to buy a house and have to rent a house. Then we both have to work hard and save for a few years to save enough for the down payment of a house.

During this period, we cannot have children, otherwise it may take several years or even ten years to save up for the down payment on a house.

Just take the past ten years. After buying the house, the couple had to pay off the mortgage and raise the child, and then continue to live frugally and save money to buy a car.

After we have a house and a car, if we have a son, I'm afraid we will have to live frugally to save money for his dowry... Most of my life has passed like this, and I have been living frugally all the time. Just thinking about such a day makes my scalp tingle.

Wei Ge, I really don’t want to live this kind of life, do you understand? "

Liang Xiaowei was speechless after hearing this. From his point of view, as long as two people in love are together, they will be happy even if their life is a little hard.

But this woman who had been in love with him for seven or eight years obviously didn't think so.

The so-called love is really vulnerable in the face of money.

As an ironic passage goes:

"A girl ran away with a rich second-generation man. A few years later, she met her ex-boyfriend, who asked her:

Are the second generation rich really better than me? You have a bad stomach and often have pain in the middle of the night. I go to the market every morning, buy the freshest ginger, cut it into slices and put it next to you, so that you can hold it in your mouth when you feel uncomfortable. My knife skills are almost as good as those of a chef. Can he do this for you?

The girl replied calmly: He couldn't do what you did, but he spent 300,000 yuan to take me to a big hospital and cured my stomach disease.

From that moment on, Liang Xiaowei no longer believed in love.

What’s magical is that just after his first love betrayed their love and threw herself into the arms of a rich second-generation man, not long after, a wealthy couple came to his house to claim to be their relative.

It turns out that this wealthy couple is none other than Liang Xiaowei's biological parents.

This bloody plot is almost the same as what is shown in TV dramas. Liang Xiaowei was taken away by mistake when he was born in the hospital.

What's even more ridiculous is that the rich second-generation man who stole his first love was born on the same day of the same month of the same year as him, and in the same hospital. In other words, he and Liang Xiaowei were taken away by mistake and their identities were swapped.

These two people who should have had no intersection actually have the most special relationship in the world.

Liang Xiaowei actually didn't hate this guy who took over his identity and snatched away his first love. First of all, the identity swap was definitely not his fault.

Secondly, when it comes to things like stealing a girlfriend, Liang Xiaowei can tell right from wrong. If his first love is truly devoted to him, no one can snatch her away from him.

Even, as long as the guy starts pursuing his first love, his first love will tell him about it as soon as possible.

But from beginning to end, his first love girlfriend never mentioned to Liang Xiaowei that someone else was pursuing her, so the main responsibility does not lie with that guy, but with his first love girlfriend.

After becoming a second-generation rich, Hong Xiaowei (that is, Liang Xiaowei, after recognizing his biological parents, Liang Xiaowei changed his surname back but not his given name) also had many girlfriends, but he did not invest any feelings in any of them. He just spent money on them and everyone got what they wanted.

After playing for a few years, my parents started urging me to get married!

However, Hong Xiaowei is quite resistant to getting married. In his opinion, there is really no need to marry a woman without any feelings. Anyway, if he wants to reproduce offspring, in vitro fertilization can meet the requirement.

As for playing poker, as long as you have money, there are plenty of beautiful women willing to play poker with you, whether it's three-player Landlord or four-player Tractor, it's not a problem.

In this case, why bother finding a woman to divide the family property?

Of course, Hong Xiaowei didn't tell anyone these words. Faced with his parents' urging to get married, he adopted the tactic of procrastination and kept saying that he had not met the right person.

This delay has lasted until now.