I don't necessarily think that women had any inherent advantage of body awareness beyond what I've mentioned above - they just didn't worry about it as much because there was no point. Birthing was something that happened in its own way and time, and compared to today, there were few interventions that could change the outcome of pregnancy or birth. I think people may have been more relaxed about it - why worry about things like LMPs and EDDs when there's no real way of controlling when it happens.
I absolutely agree - I remember talking to my grandmother about the confusion surrounding my EDD with DD2, and she said, 'When I was pregnant with your father, the 'due date' was 'sometime toward the end of Spring'!'
Whereas I, even knowing the approximate LMP because I fell pregnant within a week of ceasing the Pill (I had the breakthrough bleed two days after I stopped, then within days had that 'funny taste' in my mouth and knew I was UTD), was treated like an imbecile by midwives because the LMP, dating scan and size of my uterus toward the end of my pg weren't matching up like they were 'meant' to - my EDD (given by the nuses) went from May 14, to May 24, to May 21, then she arrived on her own on the morning of the 31st of May I felt the midwives were putting too much faith in textbooks and not enough in my body's ability to expel the child when she'd reached optimum growth. As I said, my cycles were never regular so I put zero faith in EDD based on LMP, I depended on a dating scan to measure my baby's growth, but I was relaxed about it and kept in mind that it was an ESTIMATED dude date, whereas most of my friends put all their bets on the EDD as 'THE day of arrival', and get all tied up in knots if they get BH before the due date, or go three hours past midnight with no sign of impending delivery.