[Avodah] Childbirth (was Can a woman wear a wig if her mother did not?)

[Prof. Levine]

At 11:51 PM 7/9/2011, REMT wrote:
>Today we are accustomed to thinking of childbirth as nothing too 
>serious as far as the mother's physical condition is 
>concerned.  Until the fairly recent past, however, it was treated 
>much more seriously -- it's not so long ago that the normal 
>post-partum hospital stay was two weeks.  It would not surprise me 
>if failing to light candles the first Shabbos after giving birth was 
>not a rarity, and the din mentions that missing a week calls for 
>lighting an extra candle for life.  Is it too far a stretch to 
>assume that those places which adopted the hanhaga of an extra 
>candle per child did so k'de lo l'vayeish those who missed, by 
>making it the practice of everyone?

I was born in 1941, and my mother told me more than once that she was 
confined to bed for a week after my birth. IIRC she said that she 
spent another week after she was allowed to get out of bed in the 
hospital.  My bris was in the hospital.

We tend to ignore the fact that there can be serious consequences for 
a woman during and after childbirth, since we do not see this, B"H, 
very often today. However,  a neighbor of mine told me that his 
friend's wife gave birth about 3 years ago and went into in 
coma.  She is still in a coma!  She is a young woman, not more than 
30 I believe, and this was her second child.  Her first delivery went 
well.  I have no more details.

  With this in mind and what happened after my youngest grandson was 
born (See 
"<http://personal.stevens.edu/%7Ellevine/aaron_vunderkind.pdf>Medical 
Drama: Why We Call Aaron a 
<http://personal.stevens.edu/%7Ellevine/aaron_vunderkind.pdf>Vunderkind" 
Inyan: Hamodia Weekly Magazine, June 15, 2011, pages 28 - 29.)  we 
should all be cognizant of how thankful we should be when we hear 
about a normal delivery of a healthy baby.

Yitzchok Levine 
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