Childbed

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈt͡ʃaɪl(d)bɛd/

Definitions

1. The condition experienced by a female during and immediately following parturition encompasses both recovery and care for the infant
2. This term describes the period of physical healing for a mother alongside her responsibilities to her newborn after delivery
3. The state of a mother post-delivery involves both her recovery from childbirth and the care she provides to her newborn infant

Etymology: "Childbed" is a plain compound of "child" and "bed," and its history is simple. Both parts are native English words, inherited from Old English, where "cild" and "bed" already stood side by side. The combination passed into Middle English as "child bed," and the bed in question was the one a woman lay in while giving birth and during the days of recovery that followed. The word's sense has narrowed in a telling way. Its literal meaning is simply a bed for a child, but it came to name the bed of labour and confinement, and by extension the whole period of a mother's lying-in after delivery. Because that period once carried serious danger, "childbed" was long bound up with the risk of dying in labour or of fever afterward, a connection that still shows in the older phrase "died in childbed."