In the TV series Call the Midwife, one sees midwives preparing pregnant women for childbirth as follows:
- shaving of the genitals
- administration of an enema.
(Of course, one does not see the actual shaving and enema!)
The enema was quite large, soapy (you see the midwife whisking some kind of powdered soap into water)... as one midwife says "hot, high and the hell of a lot". Several women try to avoid the enema, to no avail.
At some point, one sees a midwife taking downstairs a pot covered by a cloth. The husband mistakenly thinks this is the afterbirth.. and she midwife says "no" without explanation. Obviously this is the enema returns.
Presumably, the pregnant woman got the soapy enema and was immediately helped onto a chamber pot by the women in attendance (thus why a lady did want to opt out from it, saying it was not "dignified"). I actually even wonder how they managed not to explode on the bed (my experience with a milky soapy enema is that I lose control of my sphincter, which expels the nozzle and solution as a reflex).
Question: until when did they do that in the UK and other countries? I'm told 1990 for shaving and enema in the UK!
In the UK I reckon that home childbirth receded after the 1950s so they happened in hospital wards, which, presumably, access to a real toilet and not a potty. But this does not suppress the discomfort and the humiliation of being helped onto the toilet...
Did they at some point at least replace the large soapy enema by something simpler, like a Fleet?
(Note: in France in recent years, my wife was told to take a glycerin suppository and have a bowel movement at home before leaving for the maternity ward.)