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Man-midwives, wine and weeks in bed: the surprising reality of childbirth in Bridgerton era Britain

Man-midwives, wine and weeks in bed: the surprising reality of childbirth in Bridgerton era Britain

From man-midwives to boozy labour drinks, this is the surprising truth about having a baby in Regency-era Britain — and how different the Bridgerton women's experiences would really have been.

Vintage engraving of William Hogarth's, Woman Swearing a Child to a Grave Citizen. Pregnant woman swears before a Justice of the Peace that the father is a well-to-do married man

Serafina Kenny

Published: January 28, 2026 at 6:08 PM

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With the fourth season of Bridgerton dropping tomorrow, you might be excited to jump back into the Regency-era-esque stories of romance, sex, and relationships.

While Bridgerton isn’t supposed to be a realistic period drama, in reality, life for women like Penelope Featherington and Kate Sharma wouldn’t have been as polished as it seems on screen.

Three of the Bridgerton siblings and three of the Featheringtons have babies — but their experiences of pregnancy and childbirth would have been very different to today.

Here’s what it would have been like to have children in eighteenth-century Regency Britain.

Childbirth was a subject of tension between male doctors and female midwives

Before the eighteenth century, the care of pregnant women and the child birthing process had all been done by women. Doctors would only attend if something went wrong with the birth, or after a mother and/or baby had died.

But by the early 1700s, as medical knowledge and tools developed, this was beginning to change. The anatomical and surgical knowledge of trained doctors began to win out by the end of the eighteenth century, and male doctors being present at births became normalised.

This medicalised the process, leading to tensions with midwives, who had years of experience and knowledge passed down from older women. With their associations of science and modernity, it became fashionable among the upper classes to have man-midwives, as they were called, attend their births.

Although this switch was mired in sexism and the undermining of women’s knowledge, man-midwives did introduce developments like forceps, and their approach helped lead to a better understanding of complications during birth.

Most births happened at home — meaning the bed had to be prepared

‘Lying-in’ hospitals came about during the eighteenth century, but they weren’t the main place women gave birth. They were intended to provide care for poor women, and were where physicians could observe and train in obstetrics. Because hygiene wasn’t great back then, infection spread easily in these hospitals, so women avoided them if they could.

Instead, most women gave birth at home, on a bed.

For upper class women like the Bridgertons, this might mean that a few rooms would be made into a birthing suite, and they would give birth on their beds.

Beds and mattresses were very expensive, while blankets, usually made by the women who owned them, were often incredibly labour intensive to make. So, the bed was covered in lots of inexpensive sheets, oiled cloths, and sheepskins if families had them, to avoid the various fluids of childbirth ruining the bed underneath, historian Sarah Fox writes in her book, Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England.

Poorer women, on the other hand, may have used temporary beds like truckle or pallet beds that could be more easily cleaned, or even straw mattresses that could be burned after the birth, Fox writes.

Vintage illustration of The Doctor, the Surgeon and the Apothecary, after Dupin's French Costumes. Le Medecin, le Chirurgien et l'Apothicaire, d'apres les Costumes francais de Dupin

Women had to stay in bed for weeks after giving birth

Known as the ‘lying-in’ period, women were expected to stay in bed and rest for a few weeks after giving birth. This time was intended for them to recover from the birth while being looked after by other women.

Unlike today, when new parents often limit visitors to protect their newborns’ immunes system, women would receive visitors in the lying-in period, and Fox writes that the lying-in space was often quite sociable.

If she recovered quickly, a new mother could graduate to sitting up and then moving around in the house — but she couldn’t leave the house until she had completed a ‘churching,’ meaning giving thanks for her successful delivery at her local church.

Mothers-to-be, midwives, and attendants might be slightly drunk

Caudle is a thick, hot drink which was often given to people who needed strengthening, such as invalids and mothers in the lying-in period after birth. There are lots of different recipes, containing things like breadcrumbs, wine, egg yolks, and spices; or gruel mixed with wine; or something more akin to eggnog.

It was also drunk by midwives, birth attendants, and birthing mothers during labour to keep everyone’s energy up, Fox writes.

There was a strong association between caudle, gossip, and sexually explicit stories, since the lying-in space tended to be busy with visitors sharing the new mother’s drink, Fox says.

Women were more likely to die in childbirth — but it wasn’t as dangerous as you might think

Although the risk was higher in the Regency period, dying in childbirth wasn’t the norm.

The data actually shows that maternal mortality rates weren’t as high as you’d think from all the depictions of mothers dying in childbirth that we see in books and films.

Historical demographer Alice Reid writes that between 1550 and 1800 in England, the risk of a married woman dying from childbirth was one in 18. Now, that risk is one in 2400. In a blog for the University of Cambridge, she writes, “One in 18 married women dying in childbirth may sound quite high, but it is the same as saying that 94 percent of married women did not die in childbirth: the vast majority of women survived.”

Elite women were actually more likely to die while giving birth because of their penchants for the aforementioned man-midwives and male doctors, who were “more likely to actively ‘assist’ in the delivery, often unnecessarily and always with the risk of introducing infection,” Reid writes.

About the author Serafina Kenny is a digital journalist at MadeForMums. She specialised in gendered history in her master's degree from the University of Manchester, and writes about the history of health, culture, sex and relationships, and lifestyle for HistoryExtra magazine.

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Serafina KennyDigital Journalist

Serafina Kenny is a Digital Journalist at MadeForMums. She writes news and features and has expertise in health, nutrition, relationships, and history. She has previously written for Business Insider, Women's Health, Stylist, Men's Health US, The i Paper, Dazed, and more. You can contact her with tips and story ideas (or compliments!) at serafina.kenny@immediate.co.uk.