Today we know that we are pregnant thanks to a pregnancy test and gestation can be controlled by ultrasound, but obviously in ancient Egyptian culture there were no such facilities.
The Egyptians of that time had curious ways to deal with issues related to pregnancy and childbirth.
I found a very interesting monograph on obstetric-gynecological history that ensures that to know if a woman was pregnant, the Egyptians filled two cloth bags, one with barley and one with wheat. If the barley first germinated, a child would be born, but if the wheat germinated first, it would be a girl.
He also tells us that the Egyptians gave birth in sheds made of branches located in the garden or on the roof of the house, where they stayed the two weeks after birth.
A birth stool was used, a seat with a hole where the women sat down to give birth, or else they crouched assisted by a midwife who invoked the gods and placed compresses made with reeds in the gut of the pregnant woman to accelerate the Birth.
To mitigate labor pains they drank beer and once after delivery, the placenta was buried in the house or thrown into the Nile.
Even today it sounds very strange to us placentophagy (eating the placenta), but although they did not swallow it biting the placenta itself granted great symbolism.
To learn more curiosities about customs during pregnancy and pregnancy in ancient Egypt you can read the summary of the research conducted by two Venezuelan obstetricians.
