Lying-in

[LYING vbl. sb.¹ 1 c. See LIE v.¹ 23.] The being in childbed; accouchement.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 305/2. Lyynge yn, of childe bedde, decubie.

1580.  Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Gesine, a lying in.

1698.  Froger, Voy., 126. The women have good Lying’s-in and the children are lusty.

1768–74.  Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), I. 93. Those cushions your gossips stick with pins in hearts, lozenges, and various forms, against a lying-in.

1842.  L. Hunt, Men, Women, & B. (1847), I. 342. The Queen talked to me [Madame de Sévigné] as long about my illness as if it had been a lying-in.

  b.  attrib., as lying-in-asylum, -chamber etc.

1770.  Hewson, in Phil. Trans., LX. 412. The British Lying-in-Hospital.

1799.  Med. Jrnl., II. 190. A lying-in ward has been lately established.

1838.  Dickens, O. Twist, xxxvii. ‘The lying-in room, I suppose?’ said Mr. Bumble.

1887.  Brit. Med. Jrnl., 21 May, 1101/1. Such sanitation … might be of service in lying-in institutions.

1895.  Daily News, 9 Dec., 3/7. A system of registration of all … lying-in houses.

1899.  Allbutt’s Syst. Med., VII. 797. Statistics of lying-in hospitals show that [etc.].

  So Lying-in ppl. a., that is in childbed.

1710–1.  Swift, Jrnl. to Stella, 23 March. I … saw his lady sitting in the bed, in the forms of a lying in woman.

1824.  Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. 174. The sick, the delicate,… the lying-in.

1889.  J. M. Duncan, Lect. Dis. Women, xxii. (ed. 4), 189. In lying-in or recently delivered women.