Women who gave birth at the notorious Bessborough mother-and-baby home
in Cork were not allowed pain relief during labour or stitches after
birth, and when they developed abscesses from breast-feeding they were
denied penicillin.
One nun who ran the labour ward in 1951 also forbid any “moaning or screaming” during childbirth. Girls in poverty, who could not afford to make donations to the Sacred Heart order, had to spend another three years after their babies were born cleaning and working on the lands around the Cork city home to ‘make amends’ for their pregnancy.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/midwifes-memoir-reveals-the-horror-of-bessborough-271158.html
One nun who ran the labour ward in 1951 also forbid any “moaning or screaming” during childbirth. Girls in poverty, who could not afford to make donations to the Sacred Heart order, had to spend another three years after their babies were born cleaning and working on the lands around the Cork city home to ‘make amends’ for their pregnancy.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/midwifes-memoir-reveals-the-horror-of-bessborough-271158.html