In Mary's personal letters....

[LincolnToddFan]

Hi Eva-

I have no idea where the idea originated that Mary was injured during Tad's birth, but each of her biographers says that she was. Maybe it's because there were two physicians in attendance instead of just one? In any case I am beginning to question the idea of any such injury. AL left two days after the birth and was gone for six weeks. (The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, by Daniel Mark Epstein) It's possible that it was a difficult confinement compared to the others, but if she had been in such bad shape I can't see AL taking off two days later and staying gone for so long.

Biographer Jean Baker has posited the idea that MTL's "disease of a womanly nature" was perhaps a hemorrhagic menstrual cycle. Mary made reference to one of these in a letter to AL written from NY in late 1863, where she tells her husband that one of these days "these periods will carry me away" and expresses gratitude that Lizzie Keckly was there to take care of her during a bad one.(MTL, Her Life and Letters, by Leavitt and Turner)

I think that is much more likely than any childbirth injury that impacted her for life. And in any case, the idea that it ended marital relations between them is open to question as well. As has previously been discussed in other threads on this forum, they were seen in bed together by two different witnesses on two separate occasions during their WH years.