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11 responses total.

Depended on what social class they belonged to, what country they lived in,
etc.  In Victorian England, for example, some upper class women not only 
never left their home during the time they were pregnant, but never even
left their bed.  At the same time, many lower class women with jobs in fac-
tories worked as long as they possibly could regardless of their state of
health.  

(Hm - rereading the item I'm responding to, I realize I should have specified
that "Whether women really stayed home the whole time they were pregnant"
depended on what social class they belonged to, etc...sorry.)

No apology necessary.  :)

On the other hand, I worked till the week before my first child was born.  It
was in a high school and they gave me an elevator pass.  The principal kept
asking if I planned to deliver in the elevator.  I didn't.

I think it just means women weren't pregnant before this century.  :-)

In the circumstances where ladies were never "pregnant" anyway, 
but rather "in a delicate condition" or "knitting little booties"
or whatever, social delicacy expected them to conceal their condition
one way or another.  I vaguely remember reading bits of _...And the
Ladies of the Club_ (when I was supposed to be cataloging it) which
mentioned that younger members often missed about six months of
meetings while expecting a baby -- this was pre-World War I, I'm not
sure how much pre-.

Hey, was I actually the first to respond to this item?  That's a first for
this newbie.  Am I permitted a heartfelt "Cool!" at this point?  

Re #2:  thanks, and :-) yerself!  

Re #3:  the principal actually *kept* asking?  Did s/he think you were going
to change your mind if offered the option often enough?

Re #s 4 & 5:  interesting point - avoiding explicit language allowed for all
sorts of behavior meant to disguise a wide variety of "women's conditions",
not just pregnancy but menstruation and other "female ailments".  Not that
that's necessarily changed on all fronts - I dunno how often I've heard women
I work with talk about "that time of the month" or "my friend", etc....

Maybe the confinment to home was due to the fact that pregnancy is an
announcement to the world that you have had sex (in those days, married or
no, it had to be viewed as evil, no?).

Before 1904 they just made their own?  Back in those days, the sewing machine
was common, and a lot of people, especially rural, made clothes for themselves
and their families.  I'd find it hard to beleive that farm women just stayed
inside for several months.

To farm folk, seeing a pregnant woman would be just as natural a seeing a
pregnant goat or cow. Rural people tend(ed) to see things differently than
"society" people. Polite society saw things like bodily functions as vulgar,
and that's what I think we're talking about here.

I've thought of some other considerations.  In mid-to-late pregnancy 
one's own comfortable chair can be very attractive; automobiles with
good shock absorbers were not available in those days.  And we can be 
cavalier about exposing a very young baby & new mother to possible 
infection, but they didn't have our immunizations & antibiotics &
germicidal soaps.

A number of reasons for "confinement" have been given:  "Polite"
society's discomfort with bodily functions, pregnancy when it gets
to the "showing" stages being an indiscreet display of  "personal"
condition.  Another was health:  in addition to the lack of antibiotics,
the miscarriage, premature labor, and infant mortality rate were high. 
Being pregnant now with my 4th child, I really appreciate all of our
advances in the last few decades.  Very common ailments, like vaginal
staph infections, affect as many as 40% of all pregnant women, and can
cause premature labor & infant infection...now identifiable with simple
lab tests and easily treatable; or toxemia or high blood pressure, or
gestational diabetes...the list goes on.  During the early months, when a
woman is less likely to show, the wealthier women with domestic servants
would be able to take to their beds as suffering from nausea, sleepiness,
and anemia are common then.  Lower class women whose very lives depended
on their work were not afforded that luxury.

But the concept of confinement is not limited to the pre-WWI period.  How
many of you over the age of 35 remember seeing a pregnant teacher in
school?  As recently as 20 years ago they were required to take leave from
the moment they showed, or in some areas, from the moment they found out
they were pregnant.

That seems very strange to me as someone who worked until the day before
each of my first two kids' births and two weeks before the 3rd one's.

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