Eva Labouvie's Andere Umstände offers a comprehensive cultural history of childbirth in German-speaking Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries. Drawing heavily on her habilitation research, she explores how women perceived conception, pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period, including physical signs, folk beliefs, and rituals. By emphasizing largely rural contexts and 'unprofessional' midwifery practices, Labouvie brings to light communal female experiences of childbirth that unfolded outside the emerging medical profession. Her work foregrounds emotional, religious, and symbolic dimensions of birth and demonstrates how women's embodied knowledge shaped practices within their communities. This historical ethnography not only documents material and ritual practices, but also reframes birth as a culturally situated phenomenon in women's lived experience.