History Main / DeathByChildBirth

* In ''Into the Open Sky'' Darien lives with his aunt because his mother died giving birth to him.

* The Weathermay-Foxgrove sisters, successors to Van Richten as ''TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}}'''s most widely-read occult scholars, lost their mother to this trope. Probably justified: even today, twin births are always considered high-risk, and medical care even in Mordent is 17th-century at best.

* Implied in ''Blog/SingleParentsNight''. Vanilla's health was poor and she knew she likely wouldn't live long. She died around the time of Cream's birth (and, even then, Cream was almost 2 months premature).

* In ''Film/LeVisiteurDuFutur'', Alice's mother died when she was born. Alice attempts to travel back in time save her mother.

* In ''Film/LeVisiteurDuFutur'', Alice's mother died when she was born. Alice attempts to travel back in time and prevent her own birth from happening.

* In the ''Film/{{Tremors}}'' franchise, this is the fate that awaits any fertile Graboid that doesn't die from some other cause, first: their bodies generate partheonogenetic offspring called Shriekers that eat their way out of the parent.

* ''Literature/HouseholdGods'': A Roman mother Nicole meets dies in childbirth, due to a complication the so-called physician unwittingly makes worse through infecting her during his examination. Nicole can only watch helplessly, and much of the tragedy is due to the fact it's caused by his ignorance (though he's a good physician by the standards then-it's just no one knew any better).

* In ''WebAnimation/RetardedAnimalBabies'', Puppy's mother died giving birth to him (he was the last puppy out of a huge litter). His father Creator/SeanConnery (yes, really) immediately accuses him of murdering her. Puppy had suppressed this memory for years and didn't take it well at all when it resurfaced. Hamster assumes this is Puppy's FreudianExcuse for his AnythingThatMoves behavior -- he lacked a maternal role model growing up. It's so pitiful that even the woman he was harassing earlier doesn't have the heart to have him thrown out of the bar.

* Hemingway's ''Literature/AFarewellToArms'' ends with the protagonist Henry's lover Catherine dying in childbirth. The child is stillborn.

!!'''As a DeathTrope, several if not all spoilers will be unmarked ahead. Beware.'''

* In Frank Herbert's ''Literature/DuneMessiah'', the death of Paul Atreides' Fremen wife and legal concubine Chani is the gravity point for half the book, before it actually happened. She dies during the birth of their second and third children, Leto Atreides II (not to be confused with Leto II, their unfortunate older brother, who was killed in a Harkonnen raid) and Ghanima. Chani's death is known to Paul and others via [[PsychicPowers prescience]] ([[VoluntaryShapeshifting Face-dancers]] actively try to profit from this, by offering Paul the chance/compromise/ devil's bargain to [[CloningBlues clone]] Chani, which he just barely manages to refuse). This death is caused, or at the very least escalated, by the fact that Princess Irulan (Paul's legal wife, daughter of the deposed emperor, and Bene Gesserit, to name just a few) has been feeding Chani contraceptives for some 12 years for rather obvious political reasons (and because the Bene Gesserit did not want their millennia-long genetic project getting contaminated by the wildcard that was Chani's bloodline, and would have liked to ensure that Paul had children with someone more suitable, like Irulan, whom they could manipulate). According to Paul, Chani's death during childbirth was far less painful and cruel compared to her possible future fates had she survived.

* ''Fanfic/TheBoltChronicles'': Emily's mother dies in childbirth in "The Survivor." [[MaternalDeathBlameTheChild The girl's father blames his daughter for his wife's death]], [[AbusiveParents verbally and physically abusing her]] because of it.

[[folder:Real Life]]
* Childbirth mortality rates have been somewhere between 'bad' and 'really' bad in most places, at most times. In some cases, the cures suggested by different civilisations' schools of medical thought were actually worse than doing nothing at all. For instance, it was (in some European circles) thought that the best way to assist a difficult birth was to get some people to hold the mother's torso upright and then ''shake her up and down'' to help the baby "fall out".
** For a while, it was thought that this particularly deadly quirk of human biology was a tradeoff for our highly developed brains. This is the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrical_dilemma Obstetrical Dillema Hypothesis]], which theorizes that humanity's unusual proneness to childbirth complications is a result of our oversized skulls being only barely small enough to pass through our mothers' hips. More recent studies debunk this hypothesis, though, citing that most childbirth deaths have little to do with babies getting stuck in the mother's birth canal, and that new world monkeys have similar or even worse head-to-hip ratios yet have far lower maternal mortality rates than us. The current theorized culprit for our reproductive difficulties is rather our "hemochorial placenta" -- that is, a placenta that ''directly'' intertwines the mother's blood vessels with those of the fetus. When this placenta gets ripped out during childbirth, it causes ''massive'' hemorrhaging and leaves the womb an open gateway to infection, which is very bad. It's also [[http://pleiotropy.fieldofscience.com/2014/05/how-woman-got-her-period.html the reason for menstruation]], as well as many other complications seen in late pregnancy and childbirth, such as preeclampsia. This type of placenta is theorized to be a primitive trait long since replaced in most modern placental mammals by far less deadly alternatives. The only ones who still haven't gotten around doing that are mice, a few kinds of bats, Old World monkeys, and most apes -- including us.
** The Catholic Church has a long tradition of preparing women to accept the very real (only nowadays not so much) possibility of dying in childbirth. The ritual of "churching" was performed for those women that recovered from the experience -- a thanksgiving for her survival. There was some debate as to whether it should come before or after the child/children's funeral if they hadn't been so lucky.
* Before the late 19th Century it was still more dangerous, statistically, for a woman to have children than it was for a man to fight in a war. The two things that changed this were industrialised warfare and the promulgation of the belief that having a clean person, clean possessions, and a clean environment was conducive to one's health -- the so-called 'Sanitation' movement, which lobbied for such things as sewer systems. Until the latter got going the main cause of death in childbirth was still puerperal fever -- that is, septicaemia caused by the bacteria on the midwife or obstetrician's hands. Not that birthing in hospitals -- which had well-deserved reputations as death-traps -- was common or anything, but it was commonplace for doctors to work with all sorts of patients -- including the extremely sick and even the dead, as with dissections -- without ever washing their hands. Pre-sanitation hospitals were, however, meticulously nice-smelling -- to prevent the miasmal odours which were the root of all illness, dontchaknow, from infecting people.
** Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweiss was the first to make the connection between clean hands and decreased risk of the puerperal fever, introducing a strict sanitation regime in his clinic with the use of soaps and antiseptics on pretty much everything. Unfortunately, he was basically [[CassandraTruth laughed out of the profession by other physicians]], because many of the doctors at the time were primarily upper-middle-class, and according to the contemporary school of thought, "a gentleman's hands were always clean." [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong It's not like the doc's hands could have picked up anything bad from that rotting corpse he was dissecting before going to deliver a baby]] -- [[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong it hardly smelled rotten at all, not that you could tell with all the incense]]! At any rate, it wasn't until Joseph Lister that medics started to take antiseptics seriously.
*** Arguably, Florence Nightingale's contribution was even more important -- not because she was a good nurse, but because she realised and was willing to admit she ''hadn't been''. In her grief at the death her work caused, she convinced the world (via charts and figures [[note]]One of Nightingale's lesser known achievements was her work on statistics; the "Nightingale rose diagram" is basically a modern circular histogram.[[/note]]) that it was better for a wounded Crimean soldier to be left in a ditch than to be taken to a hospital -- and that to change this, doctors and especially nurses needed to wash their hands between patients.
* According to popular folklore, the only Spartans with their names on their tombstones were those who died doing their greatest duty: men who died in battle and women who died in childbirth.
** Similar with the Aztecs: Women who died in childbirth were considered heroines the same way as men who either died in battle or were sacrificed to the gods. The tombstone of one of them would become a shrine, and if the baby died as well, the dead mom's hands would be cut off and placed next to the baby's corpse as if they were holding him/her.
** And again similar with the Vikings -- historians believe that death in childbirth for the Vikings was equivalent to death in battle and guaranteed entry into Valhalla.
** In ancient Greece, marriage for women (or, really, girls) was often portrayed as a form of death because chances were that she would die in childbirth before too long. This association is thought to lie at the heart of the myth of the abduction of Persephone by Hades.
** Islamic tradition also counts a woman who dies in childbirth (or during the 40-day postpartum phase) as a martyr.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Nonnatus Saint Raymond Nonnatus']] myth says that the "Nonnatus" name was given to him since his mother died in childbirth and baby Raymond had to be pulled out through a C-section. Raymond is the patron saint of pregnant women, midwives, babies, and anything related to childbirth: the biggest local church/parish of the Mercedarian Order in at least one place has an altar dedicated to him alone, covered in offers and written prayers from pregnant women who ask him for protection, as well as many photos of newborns and toddlers whose families prayed to Raymond to make sure they'd be born safely.
* For many species of plants and insects, death by childbirth is considered natural. Some animals and a vast majority of plants subscribe to the so-called "Semelparous"[[note]]the word derives from Semele, the mother of Dionysus, who was incinerated in the birthing process[[/note]] strategy of reproduction, devoting all of its resources to one massive cycle of reproduction, which would so drain the mother that it would quickly die of starvation afterwards (this is opposed to the iteroparous strategy, where the mother would live to reproduce another day). The mother (and/or father) may be ''designed'' to die after reproduction, either to provide their own body as food for the young or so as not to take up the children's food.
** The young of the sea louse ''eat their mother alive from the inside out''.
** Octopodes. Contrary to popular belief, they do not die of starvation (though this definitely plays a role for the mother, who guards the eggs with her life until either she dies, or they hatch), but from accelerated aging triggered by their optic "suicide glands" after mating. The fathers don't last much longer after their purpose is fulfilled either, and usually meet their end at the jaws of a predator, as some species go 'senile' after mating.
* A similar version is an animal (for example, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk the tarantula hawk]]) who lays their eggs into a victim. Once the eggs hatch, they eat their host from the inside out, usually always while the victim is alive.
* It's often thought that UsefulNotes/JuliusCaesar was born by Caesarean section and therefore that his mother had died in childbirth (since Caesarians were 100% fatal to the mother at that date). Unfortunately for people who like to believe in UrbanLegends, Aurelia Cotta survived her son's birth for many years.
* The "natural" level of maternal mortality in humans is 1 in 100 births. In sub-Saharan Africa, ''1 in 16 women'' are said to die in childbirth, compared to 1 in 2,800 in the developed world. Keep in mind, though, that these numbers may be wildly optimistic; in many African countries the poorest citizens, the ones most likely to die of such things as post-partum infections, live and die uncounted and unregistered.
* In 17th-century England childbirth was (outside of the plague years) the most common cause of death in women. One historian estimated that ''one in four'' London women died of pregnancy or childbirth-related matters. This was long before the "medicalization" of childbirth.
* Notable women who died in childbirth include: Julia Caesaris (Julius Caesar's daughter), Joan of England (Henry II of England's daughter), Margaret of Scotland (mother of Margaret, Maid of Norway), Isabella of Mar (Robert the Bruce's first wife), Marjorie Bruce (Robert the Bruce's daughter), Joanna of Bourbon, Mary de Bohun, Jadwiga of Poland, Elizabeth of York, Lucrezia Borgia, Jane Seymour, Isabella of Portugal, Katherine Parr, Elisabeth and Claude of France (daughters of Henry II of France), Gabrielle d'Estrées (mistress of Henri IV of France), Mumtaz Mahal (wife of Shah Jahan and the Taj Mahal was built in her honour), Margaret Theresa of Spain (the ill princess depicted in Velázquez's "Art/LasMeninas"), mathematician Émilie du Châtelet, feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte of Wales, cookbook writer Isabella Beeton, Alice Hathaway Lee Roosevelt (first wife of Teddy), writer and feminist Jean Webster, musician Nadine Shamir, and Mexican actress Marla Hiromi Hayakawa.
** While she wasn't apparently blamed for it, Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter, also named Mary, arguably had issues... seeing as she grew up to become Mary Shelley and write ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'', and according to a story, she wanted to, uh, [[UnusualEuphemism get to know]] Percy Bysshe Shelley (her future husband) better when they met... over her mother's grave.
** Narrowly averted by Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII. And when we say narrowly... she was twelve years old, the youngest age at which a husband was allowed to have sex with his wife by English law of the time, and small and slight for her age; she had a horrifically difficult labour which no doubt caused permanent damage; and though she lived a fairly long life with a further two marriages, she never bore another child, nor was she ever reported to be pregnant or have miscarried.
* This trope was, unlikely as it may sound, a key factor in the ultimate conquest of UsefulNotes/{{Wales}} by the English. Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, the last native Prince of Wales, was allowed to wed Eleanor de Montfort, to whom he was [[PerfectlyArrangedMarriage betrothed]], in exchange for some concessions to her cousin, King Edward I. One of the concessions was that he cease resisting the English rule, and essentially act as Edward's governor in Wales. Llewelyn agreed out of love for Eleanor. Unfortunately, she died giving birth to their only child, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwenllian_of_Wales Princess Gwenllian]], and poor Llewelyn kind of lost it. His younger brother Dafydd took advantage of his overwhelming grief to persuade Llewelyn to stage one last, dangerous campaign against the English, which they very much lost. Llewelyn was killed in the skirmish; Dafydd was captured and taken to London, where he had the dubious distinction of being the first person in recorded history to be hung, drawn and quartered; and the infant princess was kidnapped, taken to England, and raised in a convent to become a nun.
* It happened to Creator/MichalFriedman, NA voice actress and the wife of Creator/DanGreen.
* [[http://www.rememberthemothers.org The Safe Motherhood Quilt Project]] was created to honor the memory of women who died from childbirth-related causes, as well as raise awareness, since maternal death tends to go unreported in the United States.
** Maternal deaths tend to go unreported in most countries; the statistics given above are likely wildly ''overoptimistic''.
** In the developed world, there are still very serious pregnancy complications that can prove fatal, especially for a mother who has not had access to prenatal care or is in poor overall health: [[http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/1988/07000/Maternal_Mortality_in_the_United_States__Report.20.aspx ectopic pregnancies, eclampsia, embolism, anesthesia complications, sepsis caused by stillbirth or unsafe abortion, and hemorrhage]], to name a few. Middle-class women with health insurance and no major pre-existing conditions are extremely unlikely to die suddenly in childbirth... those who are not so lucky are at higher risk.
* According to the book ''British Children's Fiction In The Second World War'', Katharine Tozer, the author of the Mumfie book series that is well known for inspiring the puppet show ''Here Comes Mumfie'' and ''WesternAnimation/MagicAdventuresOfMumfie'', died this way.
* This trope is why many large-headed dog breeds, particularly bulldogs, are routinely delivered via veterinary Caesarian section. Generations of breeders' preferences for large heads and narrow hips have made it impossible to fit a newborn pup's head through the birth canal.
** Also a common problem when a small-breed bitch is impregnated by a large-breed dog.
* Some female mammals, such as guinea pigs or ferrets, ''have'' to be bred quite early in life if they're to become mothers at all. Otherwise, their pelvises fuse with a too-narrow outlet, making the birthing process extremely dangerous for them.
* Nadine Renee, singer of the OneHitWonder electro group Planet Soul, died from this in 2004.
* Sawfish babies' rostral spikes are covered with a dense gelatinous secretion prior to birth, to prevent their spines from cutting into the mother's uterine wall. If a pregnant female's labor is delayed due to sickness or obstruction, she can bleed out when her offspring's spike-covered snouts lose their coverings while still ''in utero''.
* There is a condition called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetric_fistula obstetric fistula]], which results from prolonged labor in situations where a Caesarean section is unavailable. The baby's head presses on blood vessels, constricting them, resulting in the necrosis of surrounding tissue. (The result is the uncontrollable leakage of urine and/or feces through the vagina.) It almost always results in death for the baby, and it ''can'' result in death to the mother, either right then and there, or sometimes many months or years down the line, as a result of infections or even paralysis, as well as the marginalization that tends to happen as a result of the smell. It is most prevalent in developing countries, where prenatal and emergency obstetric care is limited, and where women tend to be [[ArrangedMarriage married off]] (and become pregnant) at an early age (before their pelvises and cervixes are fully developed) and/or have many closely-spaced pregnancies. It ''can'' happen in developed countries as well, though it's much rarer.
* The genitalia of the female spotted hyena is unique. Their clitoris is 7 inches long and appears as a pseudopenis, and they give birth through a one-inch slit that incidentally has a bend in it and they also urinate through it. The mother has a wide plethora of complications that can kill her, including cubs getting stuck or resulting in her bleeding to death from tearing, especially in first litters -- if the journey out doesn't suffocate the cub on top of everything else. But if she's lucky enough to survive birthing her first litter, the clitoris will heal with stretchier tissue over the torn part, making subsequent litters much easier to bear. And you thought humans were ill-suited for childbirth.
* This combined with historically high infant mortality rates may be one of the main reasons why Kings were favored to rule throughout most history over Queens. The point of creating a dynasty in the first place is to have a successor so that one's court and key supporters don't go ahead and nominate their own successor (and possibly try to go ahead and put him on the throne at the first sign of the incumbent king's failing health). If the king dies without a successor, and his key supporters have no plan in place to replace him, one can expect a bloody power struggle to ensue that could tear the country apart and leave it vulnerable to foreign invasion. It simply would not do if your female monarch were to die during childbirth, likely taking her newborn heir with her and leaving the kingdom with no leadership at all. With a man on the throne, however, he just has to keep impregnating queens until one survives long enough to give him a healthy heir.
* This is an ever-increasing concern in the developed world, as more and more bacteria become resistant to more and more antibiotics, such as ones that are given shortly before, during, or after childbirth to prevent infections. This may also make ''any'' surgery, including C-sections (which ''do'' save the lives of women who might otherwise die in childbirth) increasingly risky, or even impossible. We very well could see a return to Victorian-era rates of maternal and infant mortality ''in our lifetimes'' if the issue of antibiotic resistance is not addressed ''soon''.
* While horses normally give birth to a foal just fine, birthing ''twins'' is a medical RedAlert -- the pregnancy (and therefore delivery) is doubly hard on the mother, both foals will be undersized and are frequently born prematurely as well, and the hardship of a twin-birth is almost guaranteed to kill [[DownerEnding at LEAST one of the three horses.]] Modern vets use ultrasound to detect embryos as soon as possible and abort one embryo to save the other, but in the event that a twin-birth sneaks through early detection, it's one of the only times that people agree to induce premature labor -- which is usually a bad idea for horses, but [[MortonsFork not AS bad]] as [[TemptingFate trying to carry twin foals to term,]] or having the mare [[ConvenientMiscarriage miscarry anyway.]]
* Creator/JaneAusten lost two of her sisters-in-law to childbirth within a few years of each other. Some have theorized that some of her books have the fear of this in subtext.
* Creator/CharlotteBronte's exact cause of death has been debated, but she was pregnant at the time, and her symptoms included severe nausea and vomiting, which most likely indicate that she died of the pregnancy complication [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperemesis_gravidarum hyperemesis gravidarum]]. Her unborn child died with her.
* During "lambing season," sometimes a ewe dies in birth while a different lamb's mother dies, resulting in a mother without a child, and child without a mother. To get the living mother to raise the orphaned lamb (normally she'd reject it because it wouldn't smell like hers), the blood of the deceased lamb is rubbed onto the living one. This is the origin of the phrase "Washed in the blood of the lamb."
* [=YouTuber=] Nicole Thea suddenly died from pregnancy complications in 2020 along with her unborn son Reign.
* Elizabeth of York, wife of King Henry VII of England, [[DiedOnTheirBirthday died on her 37th birthday]] while giving birth to a daughter, Katherine, who also died after a few days.
* Olympian athlete Tori Bowie tragically passed away in 2023 from childbirth complications. Her daughter Ariana was stillborn.
[[/folder]]

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAkaneia'', [[spoiler: Anri the Hero's beloved Princess Artemis [[StarCrossedLovers not only couldn't marry him]] [[UptownGirl because he was a commoner]], but fell victim to this trope when she brought her and Duke Cartas' child to the world. The poor woman's last words were a curse on the titular [[MacGuffin Fire Emblem]], which she dubbed '[[LoveHurts the end of war, but also the end of love]]'.]]

* Rebecca dies this way in ''[[VideoGame/TheWalkingDead The Walking Dead: Season 2]]''. While Rebecca doesn't die immediately, as most other examples of this trope, it's still what ultimately kills her. The group's decision to press on through a blizzard the morning after she gives birth makes Rebecca die of exhaustion, and then she's shot in the head by either Clementine or Kenny during a MexicanStandoff as she starts to turn into a zombie.

* A rather unusual variant occurs in ''VideoGame/FatalFrameVMaidenOfBlackWater'': giving birth to a half-ghost Shadowborn severely reduces the mother's lifespan down to a few years. This is what Miku's fate will be since her daughter's a Shadowborn, and it's even hinted [[spoiler: that she's DeadAllAlong, despite her reunion with Miu, in one of the endings.]]

* ''Wonder Woman: Amazonia'' mentions Queen Mary Alberta dying giving birth.

* Paul Sheldon in ''{{Literature/Misery}}'' had '''wanted''' to kill off the title character of his romance novel series in this way, but [[AxCrazy Annie Wilkes]] had other ideas and demanded a {{Retcon}} at shotgun-point.

* ''Literature/MurderOnTheOrientExpress'': in backstory, learning of Daisy's death sent mother Sonia Armstrong into premature labor. Neither she nor the new baby survived. This apparently pushed the bereaved husband and father to suicide.

** Note that the death wasn't from the normal pain of giving birth, but from the burns that typically result in shoving a fire deity out of yourself.

* Appears to have been the case with the Kid in ''Literature/BloodMeridian.''

* ''Literature/TheCityOfEmber'': Lina’s mother died giving birth to her little sister Poppy two years prior to the events of the book. Their father had died of illness a few months before, resulting in the girls [[RaisedByGrandparents being cared for by their grandmother.]]
* ''Literature/DearAmerica'': In ''Cannons At Dawn'', the protagonist Abby and her mother and siblings go to stay with her mother’s cousin Deborah after their house burns down. When they get there, they learn that she died in childbirth the past Christmas, along with her baby. The father is obviously still in mourning, despite having remarried for the sake of his surviving children.