She died of an overdose soon thereafter. The Victorian reality of death by childbirth and the high infant mortality rate is hard for us to fathom in the twenty-first century. But the fact of the matter is that women do still die in childbirth, particularly in third world countries. Maybe Victorian women were, in their own way, in denial as we are today. In the 1980's, the PMS defense was established in court.
Illness is a fact of life and a metaphor.
Queen Victoria was considered modern in her day for demanding ether during childbirth, thus changing the hitherto established 'no pain-no gain' precedent. Nowadays experiencing pain during childbirth is considered a shortcoming. Or at least, they wouldn't equate birthing with pain. Joyce wrote about the joy of taking a good crap. We have lower bodies, like lower selves, that show a strength alien to men and to Western culture.