In this essay we explore the representation of knowledge surrounding childbirth and childcare in the late nineteenth century, using the journal al Muktataf as a case study. To do so, we examine three articles in particular written by different authors and with different angles. It is fairly easy to follow the broad development of science and medicine in the Arabic speaking region. Knowing how this process took place is another question. Thus, midwives were pushed out of the process of childbirth in the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth just as traditional knowledge and practice were being substituted with “modern” western ones. In this essay we aim to explore how that process was taking place by studying the discourse presented by one scientific journal of the time. In the second issue of the first year (1876), Amine Abi Khater, a medical doctor, wrote a lengthy article titled الإعتناء بصحة الأطفال, on the subject of childcare. The author opposes the knowledge of the new class of doctors to that of women and midwives. In the issue of July 1881 (year 6), the editors published an article titled الإنكليز في عيون أهالي الصين or the English as seen by the people of China. Here we explore how the knowledge of the Chinese regarding childbirth were represented and opposed to western knowledge and how the editors represented the two and how they positioned themselves between them. Finally, we compare these articles, written by men, to those written by women. Using the first article written by Yaqut Sarruf we analyze how a woman’s voice differs from that of men. In conclusion, acknowledging the representational and empirical limitations of any specific archive we attempt to examine what these articles can tell us about knowledge of childbirth at the time.