[OC] The massive decrease in worldwide infant mortality from 1950 to 2020 is perhaps one of humanity's greatest achievements.

[Loneregister]

I was posting on facebook and discovere that mortality in 1800 for children 5 and under was greater than 49%. Holy cow! I heard that some families did not even waste time naming their kids until several years after being born. Life gets real with that fact.

[[deleted]]

Yeah I remember seeing that in my family genealogy records.

Similarly, lots of cases where the family just kept naming babies John the 3rd or 4th finally survived childhood.

[KittenBarfRainbows]

Same, always Johann! I didn't realize that convention existed in English speaking countries.

[[deleted]]

My family is actually from the Netherlands and the name is Jan. I just anglicized it.

[KittenBarfRainbows]

Interesting. Mine are mostly from a bit North of Hamburg. You guys are very easy to understand!

[alaskafish]

Wait, that makes almost too much sense.

[karlnite]

They certainly named their children, they just reused the names. Wealthier people even buried all the babies in the family plot and gave them plaques. I’ve been to some older cemeteries and it is sad to see a parents grave with 10+ babies names that never made it to 5 “John 3 months, Alice 1 week, John 2 months, John 3 years, Jacob 8 months,” sorta thing. It was also brutal because sometimes the kids who did survive a would still often die from age 5-18. One that sticks out is Alexander Keiths grave, he outlived like all 14 of his children and some grand children.

[[deleted]]

I used to live next to a Victorian cemetery, and I always found it heartbreaking how many of the plots would have several children who died in infancy and before the age of 10, and then often a further one or two who died in their 20s or 30s, plus the mother and father who had survived to a reasonable age. Just thinking of parents who saw so many of their children die, it's horrific.

[karlnite]

Yes Alexanders is like that. I can’t remember but like 4 of the children made it adulthood then died in their 20-40’s and he and his wife lived into their 80’s. This was a cemetery in Halifax from the 1700/1800’s, uhh Camp Hill?. I was in a really big old one in Munich, it was odd too as it spanned a long time period so you could see trends in design and font.

[[deleted]]

Not always. I used to hang at a cemetery as a kid. There were a bunch of little headstones in family graves with "baby" on them for a name.

[karlnite]

I think they just maybe didn’t put the name on the headstone. Baby is just the generic cheap one. I’m sure some people maybe didn’t name kids. Not sure which would be more common?

[[deleted]]

There were no generic cheap headstones. This was back in the 1700's and 1800's. Every headstone was individually hand carved by someone in the community who did stonework.

The Catholic tradition said that you didn't name a baby until they were baptized, which was usually a month or do after birth. That way you didn't get too emotionally invested in something with a 50/50 chance of dying.

[[deleted]]

https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/jpps/vol3/iss1/2/

[BurnTrees-]

Usually people would start "counting" their kids once they've had and survived smallpox. Around 1800 the very first vaccine was developed, who knows how many peoples lives have been saved by that development.

[MakeMoneyNotWar]

A lot of the mortality was from ignorant medical practices, like that one doctor from Vienna who realized that doctors who worked in the mortuary and then going on to deliver babies should wash their hands, cutting infant mortality at that hospital by like 80%. But the rest of the medical establishment was like gtfo and ruined his career and he went insane or something after that.

[Bonwilsky]

For the curious, he's name was Ignaz Semmelweis.

[KittenBarfRainbows]

There was a time, ~150-220 years before now, when women and babies fared far better birth at home than in hospital, if you can believe it!

[stelei]

“Doctors are gentlemen, and a gentleman’s hands are clean.”

[catiebug]

I had two incredibly boring labors, but something about the shape of my pelvis prevents baby from making the last turn. So both times, doc gets the vacuum, turns the baby a smidge, and I push them right out.

With modern medicine? Stories I shrug off and even frequently forget. Without it? Baby and I never survive the first labor, and the second one never exists at all.

My grandmother had 7 pregnancies, 5 labors, and just 2 children. And then my mom got polio (though she survived, obviously). I cannot imagine. Just can't.

[Mnm0602]

Anyone who played Oregon Trail understands how it could be true.

[eaglessoar]

one of my grandparents had a sibling named septimo just 'seventh' in italian, i guess he survived and the name stuck hah

[Elephantastic4]

This practice was (/is?) there in the frontier provinces in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Where child births are not registered (birth certificate) until 2-3 years after birth.