Baby care

Learning to care for newborns was an important part of the training of midwives. Prenatal care, in the form of recommendations to the mother, took place in pregnancy control surgeries. Once the baby was born, care included aspects such as hygiene and feeding. The centre had a nursery, where the babies’ daily hygiene took place though their mothers did not take part in this. The room was also equipped with incubators for preterm babies. It is likely that there were not enough given the progressive increase of births at the centre.

The students of midwifery would photograph themselves with the babies in their care, especially in the case of a particular characteristic like twins or multiple births. The photo shown here is also special. Nowadays, it is usual for the media to spotlight the first baby born on the first of January in Spain (other countries do the same). Few people know that before this trend took hold, the tradition was to spotlight the first baby born on Christmas Eve, like the one in the photo, who was born in the Casa de Salud de Santa Cristina in Madrid on December 25 1935 at 5 o’clock in the morning. In fact, in many Catholic countries, such Christmas births are still newsworthy. This first birth on Christmas Eve 1935 was reported in Mundo Gráfico magazine on December 25 1935. Of course, establishing the first birth was a trend which developed with the institutionalising of births, because when deliveries were at home, it was impossible to know, except in small villages, and clearly not on a national level as happens now.