When you think of the Middle Ages you think of Kings
             and castles, knights in shining armor saving the princess,
             and savage warfare to coincide with horrible diseases and
             plagues taking lives. For the most part that was true, but
             we are forgetting about the majority of the population,
             otherwise known as "the commons". These people can easily be
             compared to you and I living in these times. The peasants
             were not a part of the noble class or associated with the
             clergy, but just lived plain and simple lives and tried to
             get by with what they had. In those times they did not have
             a lot. Since all of us would be considered peasants in those
             times, I am going to take us back to that era and compare
             the life of a peasant to our lives now. From the day they
             are born all the way to their death. I will go over the
             different types of commoners, go over how they grew up, what
             they ate, and even what they did for fun back in those days.
             Childbirth in Medieval times were much of the same as
             they are now. I say this in the biological way only of
             course. Birth was not in the hands of a physician, but
             entirely up to a midwife. The only reason there would be a
             doctor there is if there was a pathological complication.
             The setting for childbirth was different as well. All of the
             childbirth's would take place at the home, as compared to
             2hospitals in today's times. Hospitals were predominantly
             used for long-term care for the poor. Another huge
             difference in childbirth was the risk to the mother. The
             closest estimate of childbirth deaths was about 14 deaths
             for every 1,000 childbirth's. This is very high in modern
             standards. In 1988, Nigeria was reported to have a rate of 8
             deaths in every 1,000 births, which was unusually high even
             for a Third World country.(Singman,McLean p40)
             The first formal event that an infant had to go through
             was the ceremony of baptism. This...