Up until the 12th century or so, medieval legal writers weren’t particularly concerned with contraception.  They certainly didn’t look at it positively, but they also didn’t consider it an issue worth spending much time on except where it came up in connection with other concerns.  The 12th century saw greater focus on the issue, but specific condemnation of it independently of other issues only came 400 years later, in the 16th century.  It’s worth nothing though, that however much contraceptive practices were condemned, no serious effort was ever made to stop them.
 
St. Augustine argued that sex with any sort of contraceptive intent was a serious sin.  Married couples should simply stop having sex at all once they’d had a couple of children.  Beyond this statement, he seems not to have touched on the issue.  Similarly, the Penitentials of the next several centuries didn’t really focus on or specifically mention contraception much.  Instead, as a rule, they tended to discourage any sexual position that didn’t have a chance of resulting in a pregnancy as sinful in and of themselves.
 
The 11th and 12th centuries saw rising concern with what was “natural” and what wasn’t.  St. Peter Damian considered most forms of contraceptive sex to be “against nature.”  A bit more than a century later, Gratian called it “inappropriate use of sex organs,” but also considered such things only mildly sinful when the people involved were married to each other.
 
The 12th century was also when legal and religious writers began paying more attention to the issue.  A few people argued that both the use of contraception and sex with contraceptive intent invalidated a marriage entirely.  Others said that while marriages entered into with the intent to avoid having children were illegal, they were still binding.  Some compared the use of contraception to adultery, while many considered it serious spiritual pollution at the very least.
 
The thing is, though, for all that several writers had opinions on the topic, contraception wasn’t considered seriously as a separate issue until the 16th century.  It was mostly a minor point among far greater concerns.

Sources/Further Reading:
Brundage, James A. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Birth Control and Abortion in the Middle Ages - Medievalists.net

As they had been in Greece, midwives in the Roman period were responsible for more than just childbirth.  They helped women through nursing, menopause, and difficulties related to menstruation.  Though physicians had themselves become more interested in these things, primary responsibility for dealing with them rested in the hands of midwives.

Not just anyone could be a good midwife.  She had to be quick to learn skills in several areas, up to and including some very basic surgical techniques.  She had to know what to do in the face of any complication that might arise.  She also had to be able to distinguish which infants might not be worth raising and should instead be exposed.*  She had to be quick-thinking and patient.  She also had to be discreet enough to keep the mother’s secrets.

Many of the midwives whose names we know (from funerary inscriptions) were slaves or freedwomen, though a few were freeborn.  It was not uncommon for a wealthy household to have a midwife who was either a slave or freedwoman client.  This was probably a matter of convenience for wealthier women, who were responsible for the health of their entire household.  Midwifery was also among the only training a woman captured elsewhere and enslaved in adulthood was likely to have, particularly if she was Greek, as the most skilled midwives of the time were.

Midwives handled not only the birthing process, but also concerned themselves with the mother’s health before and afterwards as well as dealing with other gynecological concerns.  They helped new mothers through nursing and presumably found a wet-nurse should one be needed.  They are also known to have performed abortions.

Midwives were important people in Roman society.  Perhaps they didn’t have quite the same prestige they held in Greek society, but they were invaluable nonetheless.  Childbirth was still dangerous, painful, and terrifying.  Death was not uncommon.  Midwives had to be able to navigate these metaphorical waters on a regular basis.


*This was less common in Rome than it was in Greece, but it definitely happened.

Sources/Further Reading:
Soranus, Gynaecology, 1.3-4, 1.67-9 - Diotima
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Childbirth and Obstetrics in Antiquity - Wikipedia
Diana - Wikipedia

In early Classical Greece, female reproductive health (menstruation, nursing, menopause, and, of course childbirth) was mostly handled by midwives.  It seems to have been a respected profession, though little is known of it due to the usual dearth of sources by or about women.  Over time, some of these responsibilities shifted into the hands of physicians (male and female), but midwifery still remained its own distinct profession.

Most Greek midwives seem to have been not to have been physicians, midwifery being a distinct and respected profession in its own right.  It has been claimed that it was forbidden in Classical Athens for women to become doctors.  The story of Agnodice, a woman who disguised herself as a man to get medical training, is based on this premise.  An Athenian memorial tablet from the 4th Century BCE, however, describes a woman named Philostrate as “a midwife and a physician,” stating that all lamented her death.

Even with help like this, childbirth was considered dangerous, painful, and terrifying.  Women were usually helped through this ordeal by both mothers and midwives.  They prayed and made offerings to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, and to Artemis, patron of women’s lifecycles, in the hopes that both mother and child would survive the process. In Sparta, of course, a woman’s name would only be inscribed on her tombstone if she died in childbirth. This was, however, an even more immediate concern to Athenian women, who began bearing at a much younger age, and were thus far more likely to experience potentially fatal complications.

Over time, the male god Asclepius became somewhat more popular among midwives and childbearing women.  Men began writing about childbearing in their medical books and physicians (male and female), began to take a more active interest.  None of this, however, seems to have led immediately to any sort of decline in the status of midwives.  Rather, it seems to have enhanced the profession’s prestige, at least in the eyes of those who had the time, money, and ability to read and write.

Sources/Further Reading:
Hippocrates, On the Generating Seed and the Nature of the Child 4-7, 13, 30.4 - Diotima
Pomeroy, Sarah B.  Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves. New York: Schocken, 1995.
Pomeroy, Sarah B. Spartan Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Childbirth and Obstetrics in Antiquity - Wikipedia
Eileithyia - Wikipedia
Agnodice - Wikipedia
Herophilos - Wikipedia