If you ever played Baby Jeopardy, you know that the choice of which baby facts to include can make or break this game. When some of the guests have played this game at prior baby showers, they would already be familiar with the most common baby trivia. If that’s the case for your event, read on for some unique jeopardy questions to level the playing field!
Baby Jeopardy Questions
- Up to the 20th century, majority of births occurred at home, attended only by (female) midwives. In what century did male physicians first began to deliver babies?
- Answer: In the 18th century: the 1760s! At the time, male involvement with the delivery process was considered offensive. In 1762, after Dr. William Shippen became one of the first male physicians in the colonial America to practice obstetrics, people often gathered in mobs outside his office to protest and even threw stones at his windows!1
- Prior to the development of baby formula in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, what was the main alternative to breastfeeding?
- Answer: Wet nurses! A wet nurse was a woman hired to feed someone else’s baby. The practice of wet nursing was mentioned as early as 2000 B.C. and lasted all the way into the 20th century.2
- In what century and decade (+/- 10 years) was anesthesia first used in the delivery?
- Answer: In the 1850s! In 1845, Dr. Crawford W. Long administered ether as an anesthetic for the birth of his own child. Dr. Long has experimented with ether before for different types of surgeries, but the patients at the time were skeptical of being unconscious during the procedure, and so anesthesia was deeply unpopular at the time.3 However, after Queen Victoria used anesthesia for the birth of her baby in 1853, the public view of anesthesia quickly began to improve.
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References
1 Judith Walzer Leavitt, Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America 1750–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
2 Stevens, Emily E et al. “A history of infant feeding.” The Journal of perinatal education vol. 18,2 (2009): 32-9.