I remember my grandmother telling me that after she had my dad, over 50 years ago, she was told to put him on solids at 2 months of age, and feed him porridge. And the whole feeding schedule thing - 6, 10, 2, 6...my MIL told me they were still encouraging that in the late 70s, early 80s when she had her kids. In fact, she encouraged me to do the same - I even had a child health nurse tell me to stick to the 4 hourly thing when I had Harry. Apparently both her and MIL were of the opinion that because he was formula fed he had to be scheduled. So if he was hungry before the 4 hours was up I was supposed to just feed him water! Yeah right. MIL even suggested putting farex in his bottle to help "fill him up" because that's what they did in her day.

Birthing in hospitals really took off in Australia after WW2, when hospitals started becoming much larger and also much cleaner - previous to this time, hospitals were basically seen as places for the poor and destitute to go to die. The wealthy were treated by private nurses in their own homes. But this all changed and hospitals became the places to go for treatment and care, and to have babies. Thus the "medicalisation" of birth.