Definition of "parturient" []

• About to bring forth young; being in labor. (adjective)
• Of or relating to giving birth. (adjective)
• About to produce or come forth with something, such as an idea or a discovery. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "No very definite custom or practice seems to be followed; the most common is, that several matrons preside as midwives in the lodge of the parturient, which is, especially in delayed cases, filled to suffocation with indifferently solicitous (?) relations and friends."
• "Only in cases of difficult deliveries, which most often resulted in the death of the mother, child, or both, was the colonial midwife bound by any sort of legislation; in such a case it obliged her to seek a surgeon's aid for the suffering parturient."
• "The midwife, situated in front of the parturient, would massage the uterus, while the tenedora supported her from the back."