Microhistory of the parish of Belm: https://www.persee.fr/doc/adh_0066-2062_1999num_1998_2_1939
A translation of some of the valuable content found in this study appears below:
The beginning of every life is overshadowed by a considerable infant mortality rate. For every family, this risk is beyond all predictability.
The experiences of laborer Caspar Heinrich Menke and his wife, Catharina Margarethe, née Maschmeyer, represent an extreme case. Before they married in May 1825, they had already had a son, Christoph Heinrich, in October 1824, who died twelve days later. In November 1825 and December 1826, two stillborn daughters were born. The fourth child, Johann Heinrich, born in November 1827, died, as did the fifth, Maria Engel, born in March 1829, in her third month. In September 1830, another stillborn daughter was born. A year later, Anna Maria was born; she died of consumption in her tenth year In 1836, another stillborn daughter was born. The ninth child, Johann Gerhard Heinrich, born in October 1837, was the first to survive. He later emigrated to America. The couple's last child was born on August 28, 1840. On September 7, 1840, the day she was baptized Anna Catharina Maria, her mother died of childbirth. The infant, however, appears to have survived.
Other families had a very different fate. Maria Elisabeth Fideldey, née Schawe, gave her husband, the laborer Gerd Heinrich Fideldey, whom she married in September 1821, four daughters and two sons. The first child was born two and a half months after the marriage, the last in April 1837, eight days before the husband died of pulmonary consumption. All six children survived and either married or emigrated to America.