I agree that it's baffling about the mother not knowing. If those words are correct, then she's ashamed of the pregnancy, but we don't know why that is.

These are reasons why I wish Joan Baez and her people had inquired more about the song and its origins before recording it.

The thing about the sofa is that it's not clean. She should be giving birth in a clean, private place. And if there are no medical people around to watch over her, at least there should be a trained midwife, again, very clean, to help her.

There are people who speak of having their baby at home, 'naturally', but things can go terribly wrong in a birth. The mother can bleed to death or get a bad infection, or the baby can strangle on the chord. These are a few of the dangers in 'danger waters.'