Childbirth was obviously much riskier for women and children of the past before much of modern medicine was available. My question is approximately what percent of pregnant medieval women could be expected to perish in childbirth? Or, put another way, if I were a pregnant woman in medieval Europe, how worried would I be about dying in the birthing bed?
I know that we don’t have great records about this kind of stuff, but I’m really just looking for a rough estimate. I’m asking about medieval Europe particularly but would also be interested to hear about other cultures, too!
The best scholars have been able to put together draws from a handful parish baptism/death records from the very late Middle Ages, combined with a few early modern ones. Since living conditions themselves did not change much between the late MA and the earlier centuries of the early modern era, scholars generally considered it a fairly accurate match.
So the general numbers for source-based maternal mortality within a month of childbirth were around 1-1.5% in rural areas, and 1.5-2.5% in cities. However, those statistics only account for maternal mortality during or soon after giving birth to a child who was either alive or "alive" for baptismal purposes. Accounting for miscarriages, in particular, would increase the numbers.
Over the course of one's life, the general thought is around 10% of women died due to pregnancy causes.
Audrey Eccles, Obstetrics and Gynecology in Tudor and Stuart England, is one good place to start looking for more detailed info. Louis Schwartz, Milton and Maternal Mortality, has a pretty good chunk of relevant digitized material available in the Google Books preview.