Baby food in 12th c. England

[wiseheart]

I'm writing a Cadfael story, and one of my characters has just born a child some two weeks ago. She doesn't have enough milk to feed the baby, and neither is a suitable wet nurse to find. So, what would she give the baby? Cow milk? Some mashed vegetables

Comments

[wotwizard]

The answer would end up being cows milk, bad as that can be for an infant, because newborns bellies are not ready for any kind of real food yet. Even then, the child probably wouldn't be able to eat it.

[wiseheart]

I do have my doubts about cow's milk, as it can lead to all kinds of problems with babies, I hear. I'll perhaps go with goat milk, as suggested below.

[wotwizard]

I must have been tired if I didn't even think about all the other milk possibilities. Lol.

[wiseheart]

Thanks on both accounts. Dratted English tenses, I'll never get them right, I'm afraid.

I googled for medieval baby food, perhaps the keywords were falsely chosen. *sighs*

[radondoran]

It might be more idiomatic to say "given birth to," but grammatically, I don't hear anything wrong with "She has borne a child". Although the spelling of the past participle of bear should have an E on the end in this context.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition for bear:

43. a. Of female mammalia, and esp. women: To bring forth, produce, give birth to (offspring).

and, in talking about the past participle, notes:

But c 1775 . . . borne was reinstated, and now used as the ordinary form, and born was restricted to a specific sense. Thus, borne is now the only pa. pple., active or passive, in senses 1-42 (he has borne a burden, the tree has borne fruit, the testimony borne by him); it is also used in sense 43 in the active always, and in the passive with by and name of the mother, that is when it has the literal sense of ‘brought forth.’ Born is used only in sense 43, and there only in the passive, when not followed by by and the mother; it has rather a neuter signification = ‘come into existence, sprung’ without

[wiseheart]

Oh, I see... or, at least I hope I do. I tend to confuse these things at times. With a mother tongue that only has three tenses altogether (Hungarian), figuring out what works when in English is an almost hopeless enterprise. :(

[janenx01]

I would say goat milk with honey in it.

I googled "homemade formula" - maybe try that and see if you can modify a recipe for medieval ingredients?

[wiseheart]

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

[conuly]

Note: In modern times, this would never fly, as honey can spread botulism. Goat milk is a poor substitute for breastmilk (or formula), but it's at least less likely to cause intestinal bleeding than cow's milk.

[sidheblessed]

This.

[wiseheart]

Thank you. The strangest things can turn out useful sometimes, right?

[wiseheart]

Yes, he did... and that's a good idea, thanks.

[melannen]

She would probably use goat's or sheep's milk instead of cow's, if she could get it, or even horse or donkey if she couldn't (and supplement with her own milk as much as possible.) Whole milk, of course. In period they were considered better for nursing, and even today there's some evidence that they're closer to human milk.

If she had no milk at all, she would probably use a thin gruel of warm water and whatever grain she could get, possibly fortified with honey or oil, but this would not work very well. (She might also add honey to the goat or sheep's milk.)

...that's all general medieval European practices, I don't offhand know anything specific to Cadfael's time and place.

[wiseheart]

Oh, general medieval practices are all right. I so hoped that there would be something about it in "The Raven in the Foregate", where a woman had to raise her seven-weeks-old orphaned granddaughter, but there weren't.

[melannen]

Oh, but Cadfael is so good with the specifics it seems a shame! And it did vary a lot from place to place.

There is a surviving medieval herbal from close enough to where Cadfael was working, but it doesn't mention nursing at all. I suspect it's the sort of thing which was considered a private women's matter and wouldn't have been recorded by history - which is probably why she left the details out of "Raven in the Foregate".

[wiseheart]

Probably, yeah, but still a pity. We women always get short shrift, eh?