upsitting

plural upsittings

1. countableobsoleteuncountableThe first occasion in which a woman sits up to receive company after giving birth.

   Lying-in, remember, customarily proceeded by stages - the upsitting, going out of the chamber into the rest of the house, and the going abroad to church.

   1993, Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed - Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England, page 271

   5 more examples

   In the firſt place, I muſt heartily congratulate thy happy condition, and muſt rejoyce at thy upſitting, whom God hath raiſed from the bed of deſpaire:

   1647, Thomas Fuller, The Cause and Cure of a Wounded Conscience, page 140

   I am once more, bleſſed be God for all his Mercies to me enabled to dedicate to you the firſt Fruits of my Penmanſhip, on my Upſitting, to thank you, and my noble Lord for all your kind Solicitudes for my Welfare.

   1742, Samuel Richardson, Pamela: or, Virtue rewarded. In a series of letters from a beautiful young damsel to her parents: and afterwards, in her exalted condition, between her, and persons of figure and quality ... In four volumes ... The sixth edition, corrected. And embellish'd with copper plates, design'd and engrav'd by Mr. Hayman, and Mr. Gravelot, etc, page 311

   I have been present, stretched on the floor in a blanket (asleep, apparently, no doubt), when two upsittings have been going on, at opposite corners of a large room, all still as the grave but the subdued whisperings of the happy pairs.

   1863, J.K. Sharpe (publisher), The London Review of Politics, Society, Literature, Art, & Science, Volume 6, page 553

   And yet she developed a sympathy for the Boer families among which she lived and enjoyed their social rituals, as we see in the Boer upsitting and wedding described in African Farm.

   1983, South African Library (publisher), Kwartaalblad Van Die Suid-Afrikaanse Biblioteek, volumes 38-40, page 56

   A woman's upsitting was a social event and a further step in her recovery. It signalled that she was on her way towards a full recovery, and it was a time when more people could visit, and gifts would be brought for the mother and child by well-wishers.

   2024, Amy McElroy, Women's Lives in the Tudor Era