Champagne in the Maternity Ward
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…A small provincial town in Champagne. Winter, 1923.
In the maternity ward—silence. Whitewashed walls, a narrow window. Through it seeps the cold winter light—a grey sky, snow, rooftops with smoking chimneys.
On a metal bed lies a woman of about twenty-eight. Her face is pale, her hair damp at the temples. She is exhausted, yet there is neither fear nor surprise in her gaze. This is her third delivery. At home, two children are waiting—a four-year-old girl and a two-year-old boy.
The baby has already been swaddled and lies next to his mother. After his first cry, he breathes heavily and unevenly.
— Garçon, — the midwife says quietly. — A strong one.
The midwife is about forty. She has worked here for more than fifteen years. Her hands are steady, her movements firm and precise. She has witnessed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of wards, women, and first cries.
In her hands is a bottle of champagne with a simple local label. Not ceremonial, not expensive—ordinary.
The cork releases with a muted pop. Not like a festive salute—more like the sound of another working day.
The midwife pours a little into a hospital cup.
— Pour les forces, — she says. — For strength.
The woman slowly raises herself and takes a small sip.
No one makes a toast. No one smiles broadly. This is not a celebration. It is part of the procedure.
The Demographic Background
After the First World War, France emerged as a nation with a fractured demographic balance. Nearly one and a half million dead—a significant proportion of them men of conscription age. Entire generations in villages and provincial towns were left without young fathers, brothers, and future husbands.
In the early 1920s, the birth of a child here was perceived not merely as a family event. It carried almost a civic meaning. France needed to replace its losses—not abstractly, but literally. Every newborn became a contribution to the country’s recovery.
In such years, a demographic mechanism takes effect—the so-called postponed birth effect. During war, marriages are delayed, children are not born; after its end, the accumulated “family potential” unfolds over several years. Similar temporary spikes in birth rates have been recorded in different countries throughout history. However, in modern conditions demographic processes depend on far more variables—economics, migration, education levels, social policy. Therefore, post-war increases in birth rates today remain possible, but not guaranteed scenarios.
In 1923, of course, no one spoke in the language of demography. They said it more simply: “We need children.”
And when the midwife utters a quiet “Garçon” in the ward, that word carries not only family joy, but also an almost imperceptible undertone of restoration.
Why Champagne?
From the perspective of early twentieth-century medicine, the choice did not appear particularly strange. For centuries, alcohol had been part of the physician’s arsenal. Cognac was given for fainting spells, red wine for weakness, port prescribed to exhausted patients. At a time when the possibilities of infusion therapy were limited and the understanding of blood loss physiology remained incomplete, a small dose of alcohol was considered a stimulant.
For centuries, wine had belonged to European medical practice—from ancient recommendations to the pharmacopoeias of the nineteenth century. It was used as an antiseptic, as a solvent for herbs, as a tonic.
An eighteenth- or nineteenth-century physician almost inevitably worked with wine. It was included in European pharmacopoeias. It was prescribed:
- for exhaustion,
- for blood loss,
- for “nervous weakness,”
- for fainting,
- for loss of strength after difficult childbirth.
Alcohol dilated blood vessels, created a sensation of warmth, and temporarily increased subjective vitality. In an era when many medical interventions were far riskier, a glass of wine appeared comparatively harmless.
In medical journals of the late nineteenth century, one can find references to vin mousseux (sparkling wine) as a means capable of “supporting the vital forces” and “reviving the patient.”
By the beginning of the twentieth century, alcohol was present not only in everyday life but also in official medical practice. It appeared on lists of approved remedies in many European pharmacopoeias. A doctor’s bag—especially in the provinces—often contained a bottle of cognac or fortified wine alongside iodine, bandages, and morphine. Alcohol was not perceived as a last resort. It was part of the medical toolkit of its era.
☝️It is important to remember: in the past, wine was perceived differently than it is today. It was not automatically associated with addiction or harm. It was a food product, a fruit of the land, an element of the daily diet. In France, wine accompanied a person throughout life—from baptism to burial.
Childbirth was no exception. A small glass of champagne seemed a reasonable and practical natural remedy. Moreover, wine in European culture carried symbolic weight. It was associated with life, with blood, with restoration. Even if the midwife did not articulate this in words, cultural tradition made the gesture of pouring wine feel natural.
Champagne, in particular, was perceived as a “light” alcohol. Its effervescence was associated with quick action, its moderate alcohol content with safety. It was believed to stimulate cardiac activity, increase tone, help with weakness and dizziness, and “restore color to the face” after the strain of labor.
And in the Champagne region, it was simply a local product. It was not perceived as luxury or ceremony—but as part of the economic and cultural landscape. It was wine—simply sparkling, time-tested, familiar, understandable, and approved.
Sometimes the decision was made quickly.
— Elle pâlit… — the assistant says quietly. — She’s turning pale.
The woman on the bed is breathing heavily. Her face becomes almost grey; her lips lose color. Her voice weakens. The pulse beneath the fingers is faint and irregular.
The midwife does not panic. She watches carefully, presses her fingers to the laboring woman’s wrist, assesses her breathing.
— Quickly, — she says to the assistant. — Pour a little of the sparkling wine. From the batch Monsieur Duval left when his wife delivered her first child.
The assistant retrieves the bottle from the cupboard—not new, but carefully resealed. She pours a small glass.
The woman takes a sip. Then another. Within a few minutes, her breathing becomes steadier; a faint rosiness returns to her cheeks.
The midwife nods.
— Voilà. Enough.
No one calls it a miracle. No one speaks of ritual. It is simply a way of supporting the body—as it was understood at the time.
What It Looked Like in Practice
This was not a celebratory bottle shared throughout the ward for the health of mother and child. It was part of postpartum care. Usually, 50–100 milliliters were poured—a small glass or cup. Sometimes once; sometimes repeated a few hours later if the woman remained pale and weak. The decision was made by the physician or an experienced midwife.
Champagne was not part of an official hospital protocol—in the modern sense, protocols scarcely existed. It was an established practice transmitted through generational experience. In some hospitals it was given more frequently, in others less. In certain places it was replaced with cognac or fortified wine.
When and Why It Disappeared
By the mid-twentieth century, the medical landscape began to change rapidly. More precise methods for monitoring blood loss emerged. Infusion solutions and medications for maintaining blood pressure became widely available. Anesthesia improved. Gradually, protocols were formed—based not on transmitted experience, but on clinical research.
This was, of course, an enormous step forward: modern medicine became more precise, safer, more predictable. It learned to measure what had previously been guessed. It learned which interventions truly reduced mortality—and which worked only “by feeling.”
Yet progress has another side.
Historical experience is not “the superstition of ancestors”, but a vast library of practical observations accumulated over centuries. It was created not by fools, but by people who encountered the body daily—not in theory, but in reality. And this experience was often remarkably accurate, even if explained in imperfect language. It was built on repetition: “We did this a hundred times—and saw that it helped.”
Thus, transmitted experience and evidence-based medicine are not enemies. They are two different ways of holding knowledge in one’s hands.
Sometimes a protocol knows everything—except that before it stands a living human being
Alcohol gradually ceased to be regarded as a universal stimulant. Its effects on the cardiovascular system, the central nervous system, and overall health came to be evaluated more critically. At the same time, awareness grew of the importance of sobriety during pregnancy and the postpartum period.
Champagne disappeared from maternity wards not in a single day and not by a special decree of the President of the Republic. It simply became unnecessary. What once seemed a reasonable support was replaced by more precise and safer means.
It faded quietly—like many other medical habits of the past. Without scandal. Without public debate. The system of knowledge had changed.
One Hundred Years Later
The same town. The same French hospital—now rebuilt and modernized. The year is 2023.
In the delivery unit, the light is soft yet even. Machines record the fetal heart rate. Graphs move across a screen. Blood pressure is measured automatically. An intravenous infusion runs into the laboring woman’s vein. The anesthesiologist adjusts the dosage of epidural anesthesia.
Giving birth is the great-great-granddaughter of the woman from 1923. Assisting her is the great-great-granddaughter of that very midwife. No longer simply a midwife, but a certified specialist—university trained, fluent in protocols, algorithms, and modern equipment.
There is no champagne in the room; no cork pops anymore. After the child is born, the mother is offered water. A nurse checks her indicators. Documents are entered into an electronic system. Maternal mortality in the country is at a historic low. Infant mortality is incomparably lower than it was a century ago.
There is more equipment. More medication. Fewer risks.
And yet, when the young woman closes her eyes in exhaustion after childbirth, the midwife still takes her hand — just as her great-grandmother did a hundred years earlier. In that gesture, there is neither past nor future. Only human presence.
Eras replace one another, instruments grow more complex, prohibitions become stricter. But birth remains the same event — human, vulnerable, requiring care. Everything else is merely a reflection of what, at a given moment in time, society considers reasonable.
Today, champagne in a maternity ward seems impossible. And yet the history of medicine rarely moves in a straight line. The modern world increasingly speaks of natural processes, minimal intervention, a return to organic approaches, and the reduction of excessive pharmacology. This does not mean a literal return to sparkling wine “for strength.” But it is entirely possible that the boundaries between technology and tradition, between strict protocol and trust in the body, will be reconsidered more than once.
Will champagne ever return to French maternity wards? Almost certainly—no.
A Historical Parallel
There is another curious coincidence, almost invisible to the modern eye.
In the Catholic tradition, a child first encounters wine during Communion—a servant of God moistens the lips with a drop of consecrated wine. It is a gesture of inclusion into the community, a sign of new life.
In early twentieth-century France, wine accompanied the mother as well—in a different, non-ecclesiastical form. A glass of champagne after childbirth was not a sacrament. And yet it, too, carried a symbol of transition: from pain and risk to life.
In both cases, wine appeared at a boundary—between danger and continuation, between physical strain and a new stage.
Was this a conscious religious act? Most likely—no.
But cultural memory rarely works through explicit formulas. Sometimes it reveals itself in gestures.
…The Sorbonne Library. Our Time.
A quiet reading room. Lamps with green shades. A medical student is browsing the archives of the maternity department of a provincial hospital in the Champagne region.
1923. Case history No. 47.
His eyes run across lines written in ink, in careful feminine handwriting, slightly slanted to the right:
«After delivery—marked pallor. Pulse weak. 150 ml vin mousseux administered”
On the paper, small ink blots remain—where the pen lingered longer than usual. Slightly below, a blurred ink print of part of a physician’s finger, as though the page had been turned before it fully dried.
In the corner—the midwife’s signature.
The student pauses. Rubs his eyes. Takes his head in both hands.
— One hundred and fifty milliliters of wine?
He reads it again. Checks whether he misread it.
— Sparkling. After childbirth? Impossible…— he murmurs.
He is accustomed to strict protocols, to evidence-based medicine, to the formula that “alcohol and pregnancy are incompatible.” To him, it sounds almost absurd—like a medical error. And yet here is the hand of a living person, ink, paper, and a decision made in a particular minute.
He opens his laptop. Begins to search for similar cases.
Old medical journals. Historical articles. French pharmacopoeias of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Archives of Parisian clinics. The history of obstetrics.
Gradually he discovers: this was not an exception. Such practices did indeed exist.
And medicine did not collapse. Life continued. Those physicians were neither madmen nor charlatans. They simply lived within a different system of knowledge—without monitors, without the internet, but with attentive eyes and a hand on the pulse.
For a moment, the student feels a slight shift in his own certainty—which becomes a little less categorical.
The past is not always more foolish than the present. Sometimes it is simply arranged differently
He closes the archive file. The reminder remains: this once existed.
The ink imprint of a finger on the page suddenly seems almost alive.
☝️An Interesting Nuance
France in the 1920s was predominantly Catholic, though not entirely homogeneous. In metropolitan France there were already residents originating from North African territories—Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia—many of them Muslim. They were few in number, but they were present.
In situations of pronounced weakness or threat of complications during childbirth, decisions were made quickly—according to the medical logic of the moment. If the doctor decided that alcohol should be given to the laboring woman, it was given. This was medicine operating under a different hierarchy of priorities.
Questions of religious prohibition in emergency care rarely became the subject of discussion. The priority remained the life of mother and child
Afterword
The story of champagne in French maternity wards is neither anecdote nor curiosity. It is a reminder that medicine always lives within its era. It relies on the knowledge, tools, and understanding of the body available to it—and is almost always confident in its own correctness.
A century ago, a glass of sparkling wine seemed a reasonable support. Today, it seems impossible. In both cases, decisions were made from the same impulse: to preserve the life of mother and child.
History does not mock the past. It makes us more cautious in our judgments—and a little more modest in our certainty.
Everything else changes.
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