There's a saying that the only certainties in life are death and taxes.

Now supposedly these were utterances of Benjamin Franklin, but he was wrong.

While death is without question a certainty, the only other universal human experience we all share, no matter when or where we live, is birth.

And yet, while we do have a fascination with death and it features heavily in history, the same cannot be said for birth.

For a long time, it wasn't really spoken about publicly. Traditionally,

it was an event that was considered one of the few areas of life to be exclusively the realm

of women, and there was a degree of stigma surrounding it, and the details of birth were almost

a taboo subject. Now, a few weeks ago, I interviewed Emma Laffey, who has spent years

researching what birth was like a century ago. In this episode, Emma explores the realities of

birth in early 20th century Ireland when most women delivered their babies in their own homes.

Much of our conversation focused on the role of the community midwife, known in Irish as

Bangluna or Women of the Knee. They were pillars of their communities as they not only helped

women give birth, but also helped families navigate what could be extremely difficult times

in an era of high mortality among babies and mothers. It was a conversation that I found

both gripping and fascinating. So often historians only interaction with birth is through cold

statistics of birth and death rates, but Emma gives you a real sense of what it was like,

and these midwives who are forgotten community leaders. Now before we start, I just

want to flag that during our conversation, Emma and I discussed mortality around birth in the past,

and it might be traumatic for some people. Hello and welcome to the Irish history podcast. My name is Finn DeWire. Before I begin, I just want to say thanks so much for your lovely feedback on the Wicklow Military Road series. It was really great to hear your stories of the road and the feedback. Now, while today's episode is on birth, next week I'm going to be looking at the other end of life's cycle and the history of Irish wakes.

In the background, I'm working away on that series on the Magdalene Andries I've mentioned a few times

and I'm also writing the 1798 series.

At this stage, I feel I'm in danger of talking that series in 1798 up too much,

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