KAREN: During the first labour, when things were in trouble, did the doctor offer you any pain relief, or any kind of drugs at all?

MRS M.: Not until the actual birth. Then I was put under.

KAREN: Oh, were you? What about for subsequent births? Were you offered any pain relief, any drugs?

MRS M.: Never had any pain relief for anything, never.

“Put under,” but no pain relief, per se?

KAREN: Okay, so all of the ones that went well, you handled them completely on your own. (I’m referring to pain medication here.)

MRS M.: Yeah.

KAREN: How did you feel about that? Were you happy that it went that way, or would you have preferred to have been given…?

MRS M.: Well I didn’t know any better.

KAREN: Okay. If you knew then what you know now, would you accept pain relief? Would you have wanted pain relief?

MRS M.: It was pretty painful!

KAREN: As I know. (Laughs.)

MRS M.: (Laughs.)

KAREN: So you think you would have?

MRS M.: I don’t know.

KAREN: Okay. Again, going back to what you were expecting. You hadn’t talked about having a baby. You hadn’t known what to expect. Did the prospect of having a baby frighten you in any way?

MRS M.: No.

KAREN: Why was that, if it was a completely unknown experience?

MRS M.: Well, other people had babies. I accepted it.

My next question had a long preamble as I reflected aloud on the above answer. I told Mrs. M we had been struck by the differences in attitude between our interview subjects and many of our peers. The women we interviewed spent very little time fretting about their ability to endure labour and delivery. Birthing a baby was something women did, and so they would do it. I noted that this contrasted fairly sharply with an attitude that was common among our peers at the time, which was to try and coordinate every aspect of the birth process, and often to question their own body’s abilities; as though labour and delivery was an endurance test they were hoping to pass. (This contrast, of course, is part of what we wanted to explore with this project.)

KAREN: We’re finding that ladies of your generation, even though they probably knew less about the process than we do, from all our reading, they were more accepting, more confident, which is interesting, I think.

Had you had confidence in the midwife? Was she known to you before she arrived?

MRS M.: Yes, she was there, she was there with me several days before the baby came.

KAREN: So you knew her quite a while?

MRS M.: Well, my husband knew her. He had lived in town for 12 years prior, but he knew that she was well accepted.

KAREN: Was there a nursing home or anything like that available?

MRS M.: No there wasn’t anything.

KAREN: Did you have to pay the doctor, do you recall? Do you remember how much?

MRS M.: My husband had CPR medical. He was paid by the CPR. But we paid for a midwife.

KAREN: Do you recall how much?

MRS M.: No, I have no idea. It wasn’t very much, maybe five dollars a day, or something like that.

KAREN: After the babies were born, the ones at home, what was the routine for you, as a new mom?

MRS M.: I nursed all my babies.

KAREN: Say in the very first days, very first days after the babies were born, we found that it was kind of a custom to remain in bed for ten days or so. Was that true?

MRS M.: That’s right.

KAREN: Were you allowed to get up? Some ladies we found were allowed to get up a little bit, and some were just complete bed rest for ten days. What was it with you? Do you remember?

MRS M.: Even after I went to the hospital to have my babies, I had the bed pan. I stayed in bed for about ten days. Nice.

KAREN: Did you enjoy that?

MRS M.: (Laughs) Well it was bed rest! (Laughs)

KAREN: Yeah, I can see, especially when you had the later ones, and you’ve got all those little kids, yeah. So what was it like when you first got up afterwards, after the ten days in bed?

MRS M.: Oh, it was fine.

KAREN: Were you wobbly in the legs at all?

MRS M.: No, not really. No. I’ve always had good legs.

KAREN: What was it like caring for a new baby? What were some of the routines you did? What did you dress your babies in? Did you have your babies in the summer or the winter?

MRS M.: Most of them, yes.

KAREN: How did you keep them warm when it got really cold?

MRS M.: Oh, we had heat, we had, at that time we had a wood-burning kitchen stove and a heater, a wood-burning heater. The place was always nice and warm.

KAREN: Where did you get your baby clothes from, do you remember?

MRS M.: Oh, sent to Eaton’s (Laughs).

KAREN: Eaton’s! Everybody sends to Eaton’s! (Laughs) What would you have done without Eaton’s catalogues?

MRS M.: I made out an order to Eaton’s. I bought flannelette and hemmed all my own diapers.

KAREN: And then you had to wash them every day?

MRS M.: Oh, every day, every day. Every day.

KAREN: How do you dry them in the winter? Did you dry them inside?

MRS M.: Well you hang them outside and let them freeze for a while, and then bring them in and put them on a clothes horse.

KAREN: Was your mom living anywhere close? Or your mother-in-law?

MRS M.:: Yes. My mother would always come and help me after the baby was born. She would stay with me for a week or so after the baby came.

KAREN: Were you happy to have her there? Did you have a good relationship with her?

MRS M.: Very good, very good.

KAREN: And you found her helpful?

MRS M.: Yes.

We talk about her extended family for a little while, and then I ask about prenatal care.

MRS M.: No. I never had any. The midwife took care of me for about ten days, after that I was on my own.

KAREN: Okay. But, had you been able to do any reading on the subject? Were you interested in doing any reading on the subject?

MRS M.: Oh, I had some baby books.

KAREN: Do you remember where they came from? Where did you buy the baby books from?

Mrs M didn’t remember where she got the baby books from. She followed advice in the books to nurse every four hours, with apparently no objections from any of the babies.

MRS M.: And my husband too. He made sure that they were well fed. Like for instance, he’d wake up at night, and he’d say, “It’s time to feed the baby,” and I’d be having such a good sleep, I’d be so tired. And the baby’d be sleepy, and I would… “Oh I wish he’d just let me sleep!” (Laughs)

KAREN: How did he know?

MRS M.: He kept track of the time. (Laughs.)

KAREN: Okay, here’s a strange question: I understand, you know, the first birth didn’t work out at all, but considering your other children, the other labours, the other deliveries, are you happy with the way things went? Is there anything that you might have done differently, if you could have chosen to?

MRS M.: I don’t think so. No.

KAREN: No? Were you ever poorly treated by anybody, that you remember? Anybody in the hospital you found particularly bossy, anybody at home that you know, you wish you could have got more compassionate treatment from, maybe?

MRS M.: I can remember once when I was in the hospital when I was in labour, and I told the nurse to call the doctor, and she said, “Oh no, I know when to call the doctor.” And I said, “Call the doctor.” And when she finally called the doctor, the baby was ready to come, and then she’d say, “Hang on, hold back, hold back, hold back,” and she was holding back the baby until the doctor came, and I wasn’t too happy about that.

KAREN: No. And I think that’s recognized now as not being a very safe thing to do. But how did that work out in the end?

MRS M.: I was very angry about that. I said, “If my baby is harmed in any way, well, it’ll be your fault.”

KAREN: And was the baby… was the baby okay?

MRS M.: The baby was okay, but she was holding the baby back.

KAREN: So how long did it take for the doctor to come while she was doing that?

MRS M.: Well it seemed a long time to me! (Laughs)

KAREN: Okay, I’m going right back to the beginning again. Thinking about all of your births, what was your general way of managing the labor pains?

MRS M.: They usually had me walking, walking, walking, walking, until I was so all in.

KAREN: Oh, really!

MRS M.: I was just all in.

KAREN: Did you find that helped at all?

MRS M.: She just kept me walking, walking, walking.

KAREN: They do! I mean, many midwives encourage that, to walk, walk, walk. And when I was having my babies, I was told to go straight to bed and told to stay there. And I was wired to this, and wired to that, and I couldn’t walk, and I think it would have helped if I’d had that.

MRS M.: Well, when I think… For the first baby I had in the hospital, I was right in bed, and I was just hanging on to the bedstead with every pain.

KAREN: Yes, that’s what I was doing too. And I think walking would have helped. Was she helping you at all? Was she there for you to lean on? Or did you lean on the walls when you got the pain? What happened?

MRS M.: Well, she was there beside me, I didn’t hang on to her or anything, but she kept me walking, walking, walking. (Laughs)