I told Mrs B that I’d spoken to a lady last week who told me that having the baby in the hospital was preferable because there was no running water and no electricity at home.

MRS B.: That was the same thing.

KAREN: Were you happier at home or happier in the hospital?

MRS B.: Well, at home at mother’s house, she had hot water and that part didn’t interfere in any ways, but if I’d had to have it at home on the farm where we lived, that might have been a different problem because we only had like it was a two room house with a sun porch built on three sides of it and one big room upstairs. And you know in the winter time we never used those sun porches, only to dry clothes in.

KAREN: So the hospital, you said the doctor was good because she was able to beat the pain. Did they ever offer you any drugs?

MRS B.: No, I… Well just before M_______ was born she gave me a, the nurse put a cloth up to my nose, just up and back again. But I knew what was going on, all right.

KAREN: Yeah? So you were awake and conscious?

MRS M.B.: Yeah.

KAREN: Well that’s good. Biases on display, here.

MRS M.B.: Mm-hmm.

KAREN: You participated in it.

MRS B.: Yeah.

KAREN: Okay. Let’s back up a bit to before, when you were just a young girl, just married. Did you know anything about having babies at all? Was that something you’d talk about with your mother.

MRS B.: No, we never talked about that.

KAREN: So what were your expectations of birth? Did you have any?

MRS B.: I got pregnant with the first one, I had nothing to go on at all. To know what I should do and what I shouldn’t do. The only thing that I knew I had to get a wardrobe. I knew the baby had to have some clothes. And I remembered Mother, they used to wear those binders… it was a piece of flannel with a band on the top that went around the baby and came down the side, they had the binder and then this piece of flannel.

KAREN: So the whole labour and delivery experience, you hadn’t known what to expect at all. Were you frightened?

MRS B.: Well, I get I was frightened. I don’t know.

KAREN: That’s a lot of pain when you don’t know what to expect.

MRS B.: I don’t know, we just seemed to accept that that’s what would happen and that was it.

KAREN: Yeah, that’s we’ve been finding. It’s been surprising us.

MRS B.: We didn’t question it.

KAREN: What we’re finding is that women of your generation seemed to take it very much in stride. Was that because you were confident, or were you prepared for it?

MRS B.: Well it wasn’t because we were prepared for it. I guess other people did it. You just took it for granted that that’s what you had to do.

KAREN: You were confident you could do it?

MRS B.: I was confident the doctor would be there. And he would help as much as he could. I’m sure the doctors ran into some pretty grim places too, where they went in to help deliver babies. I remember, one, she was very big, she went all over the country, I can’t think of her name right now.

This sounds as though it could be a reference to Dr. Steele, who was reportedly a big woman who also, apparently, went “all over the country.” But Mrs B was speaking about Dr. Steele just a few minutes earlier, so I can’t imagine she would have forgotten her name.

KAREN: When you hear talk about bringing midwifery back, when you hear talk of midwives, does that give you a good feeling or a bad feeling? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

MRS B.: (Pauses) I don’t know. If a midwife is trained, I don’t see why it should be dangerous or anything like that.

KAREN: So all the other births, apart from the first one which was a tragedy, were there any difficulties that arose? Anything that caused you to worry?

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: How did you feel when you were expecting the second baby? And you’d already lost the first one? Did that alter your perception?

MRS B.: Well, I was seeing the doctor regularly the next time and I think he gave me confidence that everything would be all right.

KAREN: How? By things he said?

MRS B.: Yeah, that everything was in its proper place. The last time I figured that the baby should be born around the eleventh of November, from the time that I felt him move. See that’s supposed to be about halfway. And I remember so distinctly when he moved his leg or something was stuck away out here in front. I was in Church. And I counted then, that was about four and a half months, should be in November and I went into the doctor in November and he said, “Oh you have a little while to go yet. The baby isn’t quite as big as I’d like to see it. You got a pretty tiny little guy there.” Of course we always spoke of them as male. Never spoke of them as she. He said, “I think you’re going to have a pretty easy time of it, everything is moving down the way it’s supposed to.” That was in November, I waited till December and that was the time the doctor never got there in time.

KAREN: So it was a full month after you thought.

MRS B.: I said, “Well if I come a whole month after…” He said “Oh well some of these little guys they get pretty rambunctious.” (This exchange is unclear.)

KAREN: So you switched doctors at some point, didn’t you?

MRS B.: Yeah, well you see Dr. Finlay, at Lemburg, he went into the army when the war broke out and Dr. Steele, there was no doctor then at Lemburg then anymore and there was this here Dr. _______ at Abernethy and nobody liked him, so… But I don’t think Dr. ________ was that bad, either. But you know they get the name.

KAREN: I’m surprised, were there many women doctors?

MRS B.: No, Dr. Steele and.. what was her name… brought Dr. Brown out in (unclear) and boy she took quite a beating getting patients to go to her, but once they started going, there was no stopping. She was just like a mother to you, you know. And made you feel comfortable. I never had Dr. Sistrap. She joined the army too, and there was some talk about Dr. Steele joining the army too but she said the people back home needed a doctor so she stuck around.

She retired after she had the cancer, that’s what took her life. She doctored all those people. I remember they had a celebration for Dr. Steele and they gathered up all the pictures of the babies she had brought into the world and they covered up one whole side of the hall. I forget, two hundred and some. Oh she was just like a mother bear to everyone.

Much talk about Dr. Steele follow. She sounds like a wonderful woman, quite a story.

MRS B.: She owned the first hospital. It was a big, kind of rambling house. And she bought this house and had it renovated into a hospital and then she hired the cook and her (the cook’s) husband to look after the cleaning of the place. I remember one time I was in there for morning sickness, Dr. Steele said, ”If you throw up everything you put down there, you’re going to starve your baby if you don’t keep something down.” And I remember the nurse came in and filled my water glass, and there was something floating around in it and I looked at it and I thought, “Mouse!” So I put the glass on the windowsill behind the curtain. And Dr. Steele came along and she grabbed my by the toe and she said, “How are you today?” And I said, “I was feeling pretty good this morning until I got this!” And I showed her the glass. Her mouth opened and she said, “Didn’t the nurses notice that in the pitcher?” And I said, “I don’t know, that’s what they gave me.” Well she grabbed the glass and away she went and it wasn’t long before there was several men out there cleaning the cistern.

KAREN: What did they do for you in the hospital for morning sickness? When you were having morning sickness?

MRS B.: They must have done something. I remember there was one time I had to keep something down twenty minutes, just twenty minutes. One time the nurse took the basin away, she said, “If I leave that basin there, twenty minutes after you eat you’re going to throw up.” I said, “No, you take that basin away, you clean the mess up.” And, “No,” she says, “you won’t throw up as long as that basin isn’t there.” Well I knew what would happen and I just threw up all over the bed. Dr. Steele walked in and said, “Where did your basin go?” I said, “Oh they took it away.” They weren’t long cleaning that bed up.

KAREN: After you had your babies, both at home and in the hospital, what was the norm, did you stay in your bed for a while? What was the thing to do?

MRS B.: At home mother looked after me, I never even had a pillow for five days.

KAREN: You never even had a pillow? How come?

MRS B.: Well, (unclear.) But in the hospital you always had a pillow.

KAREN: So why didn’t you have a pillow?

MRS B.: Well, it could have been an old wives tale, I’m not sure.

KAREN: Did you stay in bed a number of days?

MRS B.: Yeah, ten days. Then your legs were so weak you couldn’t stand up anyway.

KAREN: Was that a good thing for you or were you itching to get up and get on with things?

MRS B.: Well, I guess I was itching to get up all right. You stayed in bed for ten days and that was it. And in the hospital you got up out of the bed and went home. And your legs were full of needles and pins.

KAREN: So you didn’t get up at all? To go to the bathroom or anything?

MRS B.: Mm-mm (No)

KAREN: So was that good? Do you think? Or do you think it’s better nowadays?

MRS B.: No, I think it’s better to get up and move around. Animals don’t lay in bed for a week.

KAREN: No they don’t, they don’t. So how was baby care for you? Did you come into that as naturally as you came into having the baby?

MRS B.: Yeah I think so. I had a younger sister, I was fourteen, so I knew a little bit about looking after them. I wasn’t so sure about the binder and cord but I’d seen mother used to take two pieces of cord and burn them on the stove and one would go under the cord and one would go on top to keep it dry so it would heal off. We also used alcohol. I remember my neighbour she phoned over and she said, “There’s something wrong with J_____, and I don’t know what it is.” So I went over and as soon as I went in the house I knew that it was his navel. It was all festered. So all I did was got the alcohol and swabbed it all off and put these two rags on it. And boracic acid was something else we used to use. We put boracic acid between these two cloths and put the binder on. The next morning I went over and that thing had dried up quite a bit. In fact it was loose on one side. So I made sure there was lots of boracic acid put in around and the next day when I went over. She wouldn’t touch it, she was scared.

KAREN: Yeah, well I know, that’s how I felt too. But you gotta do it.

MRS B.: Well, I was coming over to do it so she just left it for me to do.

KAREN: During each baby’s birth… I just want to ask one more question. During each baby’s birth, the first one, your mother was with you?

MRS B.: Mm-hmm. (Yes)

KAREN: And who else? Was the doctor there at that time?

MRS B.: Mm-hmm.

KAREN: And then for the others… And the doctor was with you for the second one?

MRS B.: Mm-hmm.

KAREN: And your mother?

MRS B.: Yeah.

KAREN: Okay. And that’s all. No sisters?

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: And then the other two in the hospital, who was there?

MRS B.: Dr. Steele and the nurses.

KAREN: Okay, about how many nurses would there be? Did they stay with you? I’m kind of wondering, were you left alone? Did it matter to you?

MRS B.: Well, you know, there wasn’t a nurse there continually from the time I went in. We had a signal that we could call.

KAREN: Because I would expect for me and for anybody having a baby now that somebody would be with you always. Whether it’s your husband or your sister…

MRS B.: I’ve always thought, I think now, it’s nice that the husbands can take part in that.

KAREN: A lot of ladies I’ve talked to have said, “Oh no I wouldn’t want him there!”

MRS B.: I think I would liked my husband… if it had been allowed, I think I would have liked my husband to be in there.

KAREN: Would he have liked to? Did you ever talk about that?

MRS B.: I think he would have.

---