The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (38 page)

The Midwives of St Raymund Nonnatus is a pseudonym. I have taken the name from St Raymund Nonnatus, the patron saint of midwives, obstetricians, pregnant women, childbirth and newborn babies. He was delivered by Caesarean section (“
non natus
” is the Latin for “not born”) in Catalonia, Spain, in 1204. His mother, not surprisingly, died at his birth. He became a priest and died in 1240.

From
Behind the Blue Door in A History of the Royal College of Midwives
, Hansard, p. 23. This is a quote from the proposed Bill for the Registration of Midwives, 1890, from a speech made by Charles Bradlaugh MP.

from John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.