Mrs G caught another baby when she was twenty-five. She thinks her husband might have had something to do with how that came about.

Mrs G was attending college when she met her husband-to-be, a recent immigrant from Russia. “In those days,” she told us, “it was not right for college one to marry an immigrant. But when he proposed to me in August, I said my two brothers are going for pastors and they are going to graduate this year, and my parents told me I am to go cook for them so they could graduate.”

What was the connection here? I have no idea. We didn’t interrupt because, by this point in the interview, we had learned that when Mrs G. was free-associating we got the kind of rich detail we had hoped for. Maybe she was implying that if she got married, she wouldn’t have to go and cook for her brothers. Any ideas? Send them to me here.

She suspected her husband might have mentioned her education once or twice to the neighbours. The course was called Home Nursing and First Aid and had prepared her to take care of her mother after her sister’s birth.

“I was so proud to bring her the tray,” she told us. “She crocheted a doily and I put a doily in the middle and prepared the tray just like I was taught to prepare one. Mum was so pleased. We lived simple, you know. Just from Ukraine or Russia. I put lemon juice on a sardine or something. She was really happy. “Oh,” she says, ‘What a nice little nurse you are.'”

The course had not built on Mrs G’s previous baby-catching experience, however, so when the “neighbour lady” went into labour and sent her husband to get her, Mrs G was just as flummoxed as she’d been the first time.

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MRS G: I never took anything, nothing, in obstetrics! Nothing at all! It was just first aid. Simple things. Here he comes and takes me! I said I wouldn’t be able to go. He says, “Your husband says you took some nursing. So, just a little bit because I called the doctor.” Doctor way from Blaine Lake! “So he’s coming. But just you can help.”

But he told me a lie, doctor never came. And I was there alone! And I don’t know if the mum had taken an enema, I don’t know if she did. But when she was giving birth to the baby, I kind of knew a little bit but here the bowel movements all came so I really quick threw the newspaper on top of that and then put a diaper over because there was a baby to come. But in the book, I had a medical book it says don’t bathe the baby first, oil it first and bathe it after so that’s what I did.

MARYANNE: So you caught this baby too?

MRS G.: Yes. So I cut out a little flannel sheet. I cut out a little circle like that and another circle and I ironed it to sterilize it. I didn’t know what to do. She tore a flannel sheet and I ironed it and I put a little band over the little belly. In those days you put a little band over the little belly. I don’t think they do now. They didn’t do my babies.

MARYANNE: So when you went to this other baby, how old were you then?

MRS G.: Twenty-five. About twenty-five.

MARYANNE: Were you as scared?

MRS G.: No. I wasn’t as scared, because I believed the doctor was coming. I thought the doctor will take care of it. And I say to her, “Okay, let’s just keep walking!” And I take her by the arm and we walk in the kitchen, you know. And a little bit she’d walk and then she’d start getting it again and she’d sit down on a chair. Then when it’s over I’d take her by the hand and we’d walk again. Until she says, “I guess I cannot walk anymore.”

MARYANNE: So did she go to bed to lie down?

MRS G.: Yeah, she went to bed. And then she told me everything, where everything was. She said there’s a box with all kinds of old rags, old flannel sheets, pillow cases. But they were all clean, they were all nice and white. They didn’t have (unclear) or anything like that. Nothing was… You know I’m surprised, babies were born at home and they had, there was no problem, whereas sometimes in clinic here they get a, they get some infection or something.

MARYANNE: So you knew then, what to do? With this second baby?

MRS G.: I knew then. She had very sharp scissors. See, I used to barber. I had seven clippers and scissors and brushes and everything. I used to cut hair on the farm. Five cents a cut. But in those days that was a lot of money. No. I wasn’t as afraid with this one because I thought, “Well, anytime doctor will walk in, and he’ll take over. If anything will go bad.” But it didn’t happen.

MARYANNE: And this was also on the farm?

MRS G.: Uh huh.

MARYANNE: What area was that?

MRS G.: (On the tape, it sounded like “Great Deer.” More likely it was Krydor, Saskatchewan.) Just between Borden and Blaine Lake. There was a little post office. And that was a little boy.

MARYANNE: Was it a first baby, or second?

MRS G.: Third. But she was middle-aged. I think she was about 40, maybe 45.

MARYANNE: Everything was okay, then.

MRS G.: No, no. It was okay. Anyway. Those experiences. I forgot about them until now.

MARYANNE: What about your children? You had all your children in the hospital?

MRS G.: Yes I did.

Mrs G’s hospital experiences were similar to Maryanne’s and just as difficult. The details are documented, but I won’t be publishing them.

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