Hundreds of years ago in rural societies, when a woman knew that she was with child, she or the local brewster (women invented beer, you know that) would prepare the best ingredients for a high alcoholic beer. The beer was lagered for the duration of the pregnancy. The beer fermented to perfection for seven or eight months. As soon as labor began, the beer was brought into the birth chamber and the midwife tapped the cask. During labor, the mother-to-be and the midwifes drank from the ale to get the extra strength to sustain the pains of labor and to bring the child into the world. This shouldn't surprise us too much, since in many movies we have seen alcohol being used as a painkiller by cowboys, and other warriors, when the arrow had to be pulled out of their arm. Alcohol was for a very long time the only painkiller people had.
Legend tells us also, that the newborn baby was washed with the beer. It's hard to believe. And maybe this was really a long time ago. But, on the other hand, as you know, beer is pure and germ-free, something that couldn't be said about water. Water was contaminated. You got the plague and other diseases from drinking water. Thus it may have been logic that a young mother didn't want to wash her lovely newborn baby in water, and that she preferred to use the beer. Would you?

Even today, in Belgium and other European nations, good dark abbey-ales are still recommended to new breast-feeding mothers. Living beers, refermented in the bottle, like most good Belgian Abbey Ales, have a high food value and are considered very healthy in Europe. It gives the mothers the strength to recover and gives the baby a quiet rest. No postnatal depression with a good Abbey Ale.
(Newsletter December 1996)