Came home from a placental abruption resulting in a horrifying emergency c section and 2 week hospital stay and made a bad choice to watch House of the Dragon where cesareans are a death sentence. I did a bit of research and found out medieval c sections did happen but were only performed if the mother was dying anyway as it was always fatal. I understand that infection would’ve killed any surviving women back then but apparently they died during the operation anyway. So I’m confused about what killed women during the procedure it’s self? As far as I’m aware I did not receive a blood transfusion so it can’t have been blood loss which would’ve been my guess pre my own experience. Did they not have the medical tools necessary to put those women back together afterwards eg stitches? Or did they not know how to make insicions in a non fatal way?
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No anesthesia either, so you’re doing the operation on a fully conscious patient who is screaming in agony. You’re trying to work FAST, especially because babies die in minutes without oxygen. You don’t have the time to use modern surgical techniques to minimize blood loss or injury, even if you knew them.
In reality, the baby would almost always be dead anyway by the time things obviously got to that point. [My great-great-great grandfather](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/American_Medical_Biographies/Atlee,_John_Light) was an OBGYN in the early-mid 1800s — fun fact, he was the first American and second person to remove an ovary and have the patient survive. We have his medical books and kit, which includes some [horrific instruments](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281608/) used to remove dead or undeliverable babies so the mother could be saved.
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