Death by Childbirth: Difference between revisions

May be used to set up a tense family situation where the father or older siblings unreasonably blame the youngest for "murdering their mother" and turn him/her into [[The Unfavourite]].

 

 

In fact the use of it as a plot device might be [[Older Than Feudalism]], since unless his mother died in childbirth, the protagonist could be burdened with at least six siblings.

 

 

Incidentally, dying in childbirth is [[Family-Unfriendly Death|no fun at all]]. Stories that neglect to mention fever, screaming, blood, and agony that lasts hours or even days... were probably written by the childless or by those with no medical knowledge. A few examples are included here. It should be noted that some deaths in childbirth do occur much more quickly than that - a woman with uterine atony can hemorrhage to death in minutes without emergency medical intervention.

 

{{examples}}

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* In a [[Flash Back]] story in ''[[Elf Quest]]'', Eyes High dies from blood loss shortly after giving birth to Skywise, after losing her lifemate and almost being sacrificed by a human tribe, all due to a prank by two of the tribe's boys that went horribly wrong.

* In ''[[Smax]]'' it's eventually revealed that Smax's mother died this way. She was raped by an ogre, who kept her in his cave and beat her, meaning she was in no condition to give birth when she did. She was tough. She might've survived the birth... if she didn't have twins.

* In the Mirage [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] continuity, Casey Jones' first wife Gabrielle dies due to complications while giving birth to her daughter, Shadow.

* In the ''[[Little Victory]]'' universe, the birth of supers, at least those of 'Pantheon Class' power, is acompanied by a burst of power that not only kills the mother, but anybody else in the near vicinity.

* This is one of the reasons Dupli-Kate and her twin brother Multi-Paul in ''[[Invincible]]'' have their multiplying powers. A bizarre curse on their family doomed their father to have so many children that he would be driven insane. Since their mother died in childbirth and he never remarried, it seemed like the curse would be averted. The curse got creative and gave Kate and Paul their powers, and their father did indeed go insane trying to handle the bizarre situation.

 

== [[Fairy Tales]] ==

** Just an aside, [[Tanith Lee]]'s novel length version of Snow White, ''White as Snow'', leaves the mother as the villainess but her fate is much like the original story other than the fact that she didn't use a spell to age, she just aged naturally while her daughter was missing and presumed dead. Being virtually unknown to her daughter even when they lived together helped. It's a thing. Her short story version, ''Red as Blood'', leaves the stepmother in place but Snow White herself is a vampire and the witch queen uses white magic and religious items to destroy her.

 

* Wait for it... ''[[Star Wars]]'', since [[Death by Despair|"she's lost the will to live"]] and, you know, ''raise her children'' because the father is an asshole. [[Unfortunate Implications|Probably sends a bad message]]. A lot of [[Fan Wank|fans believe]] that actually Palpatine killed Padme, by using Sith Alchemy to preserve Vader's life by [[Life Energy|draining Padme's life]]. This would have the side benefit of removing the only possible threat left to Palpatine's domination of his new apprentice. Another theory is that Padme's Force/midiclorians had been linked to Anakin's in such a strong bond that once he violently severed it, during the Force-choke he drained the life out of her. Explaining why Jedi were forbidden to get married in the first place. Their mate would die as well if their link was broken or the Jedi in question died.

* In the movie ''[[Jersey Girl]]''. [[Kevin Smith]] had the mother die before ever casting the film. (That was sorta the point of it, [[Reality Subtext|how he'd react if his wife died he had to raise his daughter alone]].) This is also inverted, as it was not the actual childbirth that killed her, but a brain aneurysm that ruptured during the process. Any kind of excessive physical strain or exertion would have done the trick, or enough time for it to get bigger and hemorrhage on its own.

* Somewhat subverted in [[Revolutionary Road]], where April bleeds to death from a botched attempt at self-abortion.

* A variant in the comedy/thriller ''[[North Sea Hijack]]'', in which Roger Moore's character (in explaining his dislike of women) says "Both my parents died tragically in childbirth".

* The beginning of ''[[The Fly|The Fly II]]'' involving Veronica 'Ronnie' Quaife.

* Similar to the ''Alien'' example is ''[[Species]] II'', in which the human-looking offspring of the male alien age so quickly in the womb that they burst their way out.

* Inverted in ''[[Angus]]'': While the title character was being born, his ''father'' [[Birth-Death Juxtaposition|had a fatal heart attack]].

* Played with in ''[[Snow White: A Tale of Terror|Snow White a Tale of Terror]]''. Lilliana (the mother) was already dying from a wound in her chest when Lilli was born. She instructed Frederich to cut the baby out of her because it was the only way to make sure Lilli didn't die with her.

 

 

* In [[The Bible]], Jacob's favorite wife Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin.

* In ''[[The Roman Mysteries]]'' Flavia Gemina's mother died giving birth to her. Also, in ''The Slavegirl of Jerusalem'' the older sister of one of the main characters dies giving birth to twins.

** A bad luck curse, to be specific. It was the usual medical nastiness that actually did her in; the curse just brought that on.

* In [[Charles Dickens]]'s ''[[Oliver Twist]]'', Oliver's mother Agnes Fleeming died after giving birth to him, as the end to a huge [[Break the Cutie]] process.

* Much more than a [[Tear Jerker]] is found in Frank Herbert's ''[[Dune]]'', as 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 [[Psychic Powers|prescience]] ([[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Face-dancers]] actively try to profit from this, by offering Paul the chance / compromise / devil's bargain to [[Cloning Blues|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 millenia-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.

* Used in both Daenerys' and Tyrion's backstories in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''; in both cases, it's justified by a particularly difficult birth (Dany was born as the family was fleeing from Robert Baratheon's assassins, and Tyrion's deformities lead to complications in labor.) Aside from this, it doesn't come up much, though it's mentioned as being a concern. Westeros' technology is at a medieval level, and it's fairly realistic.

** Also, it was hinted that Lyanna Stark might have died in childbirth. The bloody bed in Ned's fever dreams in Game of Thrones is used to refer to a child birth bed elsewhere in the books. Of course, this comes up in certain theories about Jon Snow's parents and his [[Secret Legacy]].

* In ''[[War and Peace]]'', the [[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|little princess]] dies giving birth to Prince Andrei's only son.

* Cathy I in ''[[Wuthering Heights (novel)|Wuthering Heights]]'' dies just after giving birth to [[Dead Guy, Junior|Cathy II]], having been severely weakened by [[Brain Fever]], though this isn't played for gothic family romance laughs. Interestingly, [[Wuthering Heights (novel)|Wuthering Heights]] was (famously) not written by a man, but rather a motherless woman herself.

* In [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Nation]]'', Daphne's mother dies giving birth. Her father's reaction to this is part of the reason for her being stuck on the island, and her dealing with it is a part of the plot, dealt with in a very touching scene.

* The title character in [[Astrid Lindgren]]'s ''Mio, my Mio'' was placed at an orphanage as a baby after his mother died at childbirth. This was common practice in Lindgren's native Sweden in the early 20th century, due to the idea that a man couldn't raise children without the help of a woman. Mio's adoptive parents wanted a girl, but there were only boys available, making him an unwanted adopted child. Lucky for Mio, his real father has been searching for him ever since his birth, and finally finds him and brings him home to the Land of Faraway, where the father is king. The book gives a beautiful description of parent and child being separated when the child is an infant and reunited later, likely inspired by the fact that Lindgren herself had to place her firstborn child in foster care during his first years of life.

* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Breaking Dawn]]''. Somewhat subverted because Bella survives to Renesmee's birth, by being turned into a vampire.

* To a degree, used in [[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]. Little Remedios, Colonel Aureliano Buendía's teenaged wife, dies when her already risky pregnancy with twins takes a turn for the worse. Later, [[Genki Girl|Amaranta Úrsula]] perishes after she gives birth to the last Aureliano... the son of her nephew and lover Aureliano Babilonia Buendía.

* In ''The Shadow of the Wind'', Julian Carax, author of the eponymous book, has a [[Despair Event Horizon]] after his lover dies in childbirth (the child dies also). He never knew that the reason her family allowed her to die was because [[Incest Is Relative|she was his sister]].

* Miriel in Tolkien's ''[[Silmarillion]]'' dies of weariness after giving birth to her son Fëanor, saying "[never] again shall I bear child; for strength that would have nourished the life of many has gone forth into Fëanor." (Indeed.)

* In the first ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' series, {{spoiler|Silverstream}} dies while giving birth to her kits, causing much grief for her mate and the medicine cat who failed to save her.

* In ''[[Redwall|Outcast of Redwall]]'', Bluefen dies after giving birth to Veil Sixclaw, the title character.

* The ''[[CoDominium|War World]]'' series has a lot of this, as childbirth is even more difficult on thin-aired Haven than on Earth, and breeding is an important theme of the series.

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

* In ''The Whitby Witches'' trilogy by Robin Jarvis, the goblin-like aufwaders have been all but wiped out by a curse which causes any female aufwader who becomes pregnant to fall fatally ill, usually within the first three months of conception. Even those who carry a pregnancy to term do so in vain, as the child almost invariably dies with its mother. The only exception to this rule is a young female named Nelda who, after becoming the only aufwader born since the laying of the curse to survive birth, later gives birth to the first baby born after the curse is lifted.

** It's much worse than "fall fatally ill". All the blood in their veins [[Body Horror|turns to brine]].

* Almost happens to Anne twice in the [[Anne of Green Gables]] series. Once, with her first child, in which the baby died as a result of being premature. And once that was only revealed in backstory, while giving birth to her sixth child and youngest son, Shirley.

* This is how Anna and Caleb's mother died in ''Sarah, Plain and Tall'':

* Yeerks in ''[[Animorphs]]'', due to [[Bizarre Alien Biology]], always die in the act of reproduction. Three Yeerks join together and then split into hundreds of offspring. [[Fridge Logic|One wonders why individuals would choose to do this.]]

* Gothic novels in [[Jane Austen]]'s time used it with such abandon as to inspire the opening quote from ''Northanger Abbey''.

* Appears to have been the case with the Kid in ''[[Blood Meridian]].''

* In John Moore's ''Slay and Rescue'', mothers of both Prince Charming and the three female protagonists died in childbirth. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]]:

'''Princess Ann''': [The wizard] Mandelbaum says it's because royal families can afford physicians and the very best medical care. Consequently, they die like flies. }}

* [[The Elric Saga|The last empress of Melniboné]] "died bringing her sole thin-blooded issue into the world", as if Elric's [[Doom Magnet]] sundae needed that cherry on top.

* The [[Our Dragons Are Different|Kantri]] in [[Tales of Kolmar]] have tremendous clawed hands with very limited dexterity. It's mentioned that consequently, when a child is turned the wrong way in the womb the results are disastrous - a birth sister might reach in to try and turn the baby, but usually mother and child both die. This situation comes up in ''Song In The Silence''; fortunately there's a human on hand who has no claws and delivers the child with no harm to either, though she's horribly burned and nearly dies herself.

 

* "[[Little House on the Prairie (TV series)|Little House On the Prairie]]'': The actual cause of death by Nancy Olesen's biological mother. For years, Nancy – a young Nellie Olesen-lookalike orphan with severe behavioral problems – had claimed she was abandoned by her mother, but her adopted mother (the evil Mrs. Olesen, of all people) helps Nancy come to terms with the fate of her birth mother.

** Several other episodes dealt with pre-eclampsia and birth-related complications. One example is the Season 7 episode "A Faraway Cry," where Caroline Ingalls tends to a childhood friend who begins having complications with her pregnancy.

* Wilson's first girlfriend on ''[[7th Heaven]]'' was given the [[Death by Sex]] approach in [[Backstory]], just so he could be a dramatic Single Teen Dad character.

* Used straight once on ''[[Law and Order Special Victims Unit]]'', when the poor mother had placenta previa, and had been kidnapped and locked up for a few days. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in another episode, along with its unlikelihood:

'''Melinda Warner''': You rarely see it nowadays... }}

** And averted in another episode when Stabler's wife Kathy is on Cliché Road heading to Trope Avenue, having been involved in a car accident along with Olivia. She gives birth to a baby boy in an ambulance on the way to the hospital, then loses blood pressure and consciousness as the screen fades to black... only to have her wide awake and recovering fully when Stabler arrives at the hospital.

** Plus, ''every woman'' who conceived their child on the Island. Which is why Ben is so protective of his adoptive daughter...

*** And by 'protective' we mean [[Knight Templar Parent|kidnaps his daughter's boyfriend and spends weeks brainwashing him in order to make him unable to perform.]]

* On ''[[Angel]]'', Darla the vampire dies during Connor's birth, but in a twist, it is because she stakes herself allowing Connor to live, since she was physically incapable of delivering a child.

* On ''[[The Pretender]]'', Brigitte died shortly after Baby Parker was born while she was on the run, something she knew would happen.

* Rare villainous example: In the ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' episode "A Thousand Words", the wife/accomplice of a serial kidnapper and rapist died this way after her murderous spouse committed suicide, leaving her with only his latest chained-up victim to help when she went into bloody labor.

 

* The Tim McGraw song "Don't Take the Girl" ends with the girl in question "fading fast" after a difficult childbirth. Her fate is left hanging, with the protagonist praying to God to take him instead.

** Country music in general is fond of this trope. (Well, [[Stuffed Into the Fridge|dead wives]] in general, but especially this one.)

* The song ''Light of Day Day of Darkness'' by the doom metal band Green Carnation has both the death of the woman and the child in childbirth as a constant theme:

* Threatened in ''[http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch006.htm Willie's Lady]''. His mother, a [[Wicked Witch|rank witch]], has enchanted his wife so she will never give birth, having been in labor for days. (Fortunately, Willie figures out how to undo the spell.)

And you shall wed another may.'' }}

* In ''[http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch015.htm Leesom Brand]'', the lovers try to elope, but she goes into labor in the woods and dies with the baby.

* In some variants of ''[http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch102.htm Willie and Earl Richard's Daughter]'', the woman dies in childbirth, and the father must leave the living baby behind in hopes that the woman's father will get a nurse for it. He does.

* [[The Decemberists|The Rake's Song]] involves a young woman who dies in the process of giving birth to her fourth child. Tragic, right? Think again. The [[Complete Monster|humble narrator]] considers her death a blessing, and then proceeds to murder the rest of his children.

* Stevie Wright's "Evie (part 3)"

* Live's song "Lightning Crashes" is about a woman who dies in childbirth, her daughter being adopted afterward.

* "May" by [[James Durbin]]:

* The Music Video for [[Nickelback]]'s "Lullaby", but the song is really about suicide.

 

* Izanami, Shinto mother goddess, died giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi. Her husband Izanagi was so infuriated, he killed the newborn child (although its blood gave way to create numerous deities, such as Take-Mikazuchi). He tried rescuing his wife from the land of the dead, but she could not return to him and was now a deity of death, because of Izanagi fleeing from her and the ''ikusa'' and ''shikome'' she sent after him. She vowed to kill 500 people each day in the mortal world, to which Izanagi said he'd give life to 1500.

** 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.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Women in the ''Pendragon'' RPG have an extremely high chance of suffering this; it's actually the most common cause of death, at least for female PCs. The system is also fairly misogynistic, reflecting many 'medieval values,' so childbirth is pretty much a female PC's main duty, unless they're very inventive with their character. At least one such PC made it her life's goal to avoid getting married and pregnant, just to avoid this.

* The birth of a werefox in the ''Kitsune'' supplement for the old ''[[World of Darkness]]'' almost always causes this...sort of. For mystical reasons that are never completely explained, the birth of a Kitsune requires a sacrifice, so a non-Kitsune parent of a Kitsune has a 90% chance of dying when the child is born. Yes, this happens to fathers as well as mothers.

* The Weathermay-Foxgrove sisters, successors to Van Richten as ''[[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.

* According to the ''[[Pathfinder]]'' supplement ''Blood of Fiends'', this is why "Motherless" is a [[In-Series Nickname|canonical slang term]] for [[Eldritch Abomination|qlippoth]]-tieflings.

 

* Appears in the musical "Kristina", based on Vilhelm Moberg's [[The Emigrants|"Emigrants" suite]]. Though in this case it is a miscarriage that leads to the death of Kristina.

* In ''[[Our Town]]'', the final scene of the play is about Emily looking back on the town and her life after she dies in childbirth.

* [[Richard Wagner]]'s operatic tetralogy ''[[The Ring of the Nibelung]]'' has this in store for {{spoiler|Sieglinde, who dies as she gives birth to the hero Siegfried, [[Twincest|her incestuous child]] with her already dead twin brother Siegmund. Her sort-of "midwife", the dwarf Mime, takes baby Siegfried in.}}

* In ''[[A Midsummer Night's Dream]]'', the disputed page boy's mother died in childbirth, which is why Titania's raising him.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** Alistair's mother died giving birth to him, too. {{spoiler|For extra points, he was the illegitimate son of the king, and his half-sister Goldanna blames him for their mother's death (and just about everything else). She's a lovely person.}}

 

* It's heavily implied that Sam's mother died from complications after childbirth in ''[[Cheer]]'' but Sam's father insists that she's not to blame.

* ''[[Kevin and Kell]]'''s [http://www.kevinandkell.com/2001/kk1001.html Wanda Woolstone] [http://www.kevinandkell.com/2001/kk1008.html dies in childbirth giving birth to Corrie, which serves as a FreudianExcuse for her father Ralph] [http://www.kevinandkell.com/2001/kk1009.html to want to eat Kevin in order to spare his sister the same grief].

* Thump Sharpley's mother in ''[[Everyday Heroes]]'' [http://www.webcomicsnation.com/eddurd/everydayheroes/series.php?view=single&ID=184007 died during childbirth.] Thump had to be rescued by c-section, but sustained a small amount of brain damage due to lack of oxygen.

* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' offers a more protracted example. Surma wasted away over a twelve-year period due to {{spoiler|her [[Half-Human Hybrid|non-human heritage]] forcing her to transfer her life-force to her daughter.}} This same fate awaits said daughter, Antimony, should she have children.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* In ''[[The Gamers Alliance]]'', [[White-Haired Pretty Girl|Viirsa]] gives birth to Kaisa and dies in her lover [[Mighty Glacier|Hector's]] arms after being fatally wounded in the aftermath of the infiltration of Myridia during the Great War.

* The mother of the Fiametta triplets in ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' version 4, which sets up most of the trio's future emotional issues.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In the ''[[Thundercats 2011|ThunderCats (2011)]]'' episode "Native Son", a [[Flash Back]] reveals the Queen of Thundera died giving birth to the crown prince Lion-O. For her toddler son Tygra, who she and her king Claudius adopted after [[Law of Inverse Fertility|struggling]] to have a child, Lion-O's [[Royal Blood]] ensured he lost both his Mother ''and'' his chance at the throne at the same time.

 

* Childbirth mortality rates have been bad at most points in history. In many cases, doing nothing would have been preferable to the [[Freakier Than Fiction]] truth - they thought the best way to assist a difficult birth was to get a group to hold the mother's torso upright and then ''shake her up and down'' to help the baby "fall out". The Catholic Church told pregnant women to prepare for their deaths due to the risks involved in childbirth.

** The ritual of "churching" was performed for women when they had recovered; it was a thanksgiving for the woman's survival, even if the child had died.

* 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 [[Squick|dead mom's hands would be cut off and placed next to the baby's corpse]] as if they were holding him/her.

* This trope was, unlikely as it may sound, a key factor in the ultimate conquest of Wales by the English. Llewelyn ap Gruffyd, the last native Prince of Wales, was allowed to wed Eleanor de Montfort, to whom he was [[Perfectly Arranged Marriage|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, [[wikipedia: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 just happened to [http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Dan_Green_loses_wife_to_childbirth Michal Friedman], NA voice actress and the wife of [[Dan Green]].

** Maternal deaths tend to go unreported in most countries; the statistics given above are likely wildly ''overoptimistic''.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Death Tropes]]

[[Category:Undead Horse Trope]]

[[Category:Double Standard]]

[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]