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====What was Twilight Sleep?====
Though most women gave birth at home before the 19th century, the 20th century gave rise to maternity hospitals and more women gave birth with physicians in attendance. Dr. Joseph DeLee, author of the most frequently used obstetric textbook of the time ''Principles and Practice of Obstetrics'', argued that childbirth was a process from which few women emerged unscathed. He believed that physicians needed to maintain control over the labor and delivery process through active protocols and medical interventions .<ref name="test">Lynette A. Ament, ''Professional Issues in Midwifery'' (Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2007), p. 23. </ref> Specialist obstetricians should sedate women at the onset of labor, allow the cervix to dilate, give ether during the second stage of labor, cut an episiotomy, deliver the baby with forceps, extract the placenta, give medications for the uterus to contract and repair the episiotomy.
His article was published in the first issue of the ''American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology''. All of the interventions that DeLee prescribed did become routine. By 1920, most doctors believed that "normal" deliveries were rare, and that doctors needed to be present to prevent trouble, and by 1921, thirty to fifty percent of women gave birth in hospitals.<ref>Richard Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz, ''Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)</ref>
