MRS S: We had a nurse there, and there was a doctor that lived right in town and he could move back and forth when it was a long procedure. Not too many babies died at the hospital. It was more of those that were in the country and could not come in on time and had suffered too much already. I know there was a pair of twins born in the neighbourhood and they both died.

KAREN: Do you have a memory of many babies who died at home? I mean, not in your home, but of your neighbours, do you remember hearing stories of babies who died?

MRS S: Yes, but after Goodwill Hospital was there, it was a different thing, you know. They had not as many die, but they did far better. And it was improving right along. Until there wasn’t enough business at home anymore for the Goodwill Hospital and it had to be closed down and mothers went into the city to have their baby in the hospital.

MARYANNE: So for you, having the baby in the hospital as compared to having the baby at home, was that an improvement, did you feel?

MRS S: Yes, it was an improvement. You could have a… get relief of pain, much of the pain and also of the danger. You were watched closely by the doctor and there were already some nurses in that Goodwill Hospital. There were two nurses and they took care of me very well when D_____ came. That’s where I had him.

KAREN: You also told us, in the story, that the midwife as far as you remembered, cost five dollars, and the doctor cost fifty dollars?

MRS S: Yes, we had a midwife with us for the first baby and it was five dollars.

KAREN: Now how did that feel, as a young married couple, did that feel like a lot of money to you?

MRS S: Oh yes! Yes, five dollars was quite a handful of money at that time.

KAREN: What about the doctor charging fifty dollars? Could you have managed to pay fifty dollars?

MRS S: Oh well, he was well looked after, afterwards between my husband and myself, we were glad that we’d had a doctor. Still, he would probably have got better without the doctor, too. But a little bit slower. (I don’t know what incident she’s referring to here.) Of course if you talked to the older people, who’d never had a doctor they thought it was unnecessary.

KAREN: That’s what you said, I remember you said that, yes.

MARYANNE: When you had the twins, the second baby was breech, you told us, and that the midwife had a bit of difficulty. Do you remember what she did?

MRS S: She took her hands a certain way and turned the baby around, I don’t know how she did it.

MARYANNE: So she put her hands on your stomach?

MRS S: Something like that. Yes. And she told me, she says, “This baby has room now, and it moves around quite a bit.” And, but she says, “I don’t know whether we’re going to get it born alive,” and I felt sorry because, I said, “I would like to keep it too, because the one that was there already and we’d lost the first one.” I felt that two wasn’t too much and all at once she had him turned the right way and he came. He came. He was there.

MARYANNE: How did she know he was breech? Was he showing a foot?

MRS S: The feet, she had a hold of the feet.

MARYANNE: Really?

MRS S: Yes.

MARYANNE: So did she push the feet back?

MRS S: Another of my labour pains came and she helped along. I wasn’t strong enough to get him through, you see. And then next time she helped push everything back. “Get back, don’t push forwards.” And she somehow made him shoot a somersault, I don’t know.

And she somehow made him shoot a somersault, I don’t know.

MARYANNE: So she actually pushed the feet back into you?

MRS S: Yes.

MARYANNE: So the feet were already showing?

MRS S: Yes, well she had a hold of them, like that. She shows us how the midwife held the feet between her fingers. The boy had dark hair, and the girl, she was more of a blonde. Leaning back to her father’s family. My mother-in-law, had lighter hair and her skin was blonde, she wasn’t the dark colour that I was.

MARYANNE: So that must have been quite an experience?

MRS S: Oh it was, you know. I was only, we were only, we were married three years, and we had three children and one had died and we were parents to two live ones. All through life they were always together. When they learned to walk, they’d crawl to the chair and start out. The girl was more careful, she would let go slowly and rise herself just in the middle of the room. The boy, he’d have to go back to the chair and get started and he ran until he slapped down and then he’d go back to the chair. It was a lot of fun!

MARYANNE: Asks about the wash basket and how it was painted.

MRS S: Yes, that was a laundry basket. It had handles at both ends. And I made a long pillow and that’s where I put the baby in. And I had a rocking chair without arms and I’d get a string of some sort and tie this handle to this side and the other one to here and I could rock it with my feet. They would go to sleep and I could mend some things or prepare some things that could be done while I was close by.

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These interviews often end abruptly. Mrs S was 99 years old when we did this interview. We kept a careful eye on the ladies, and if they began to look even a bit tired, we simply stopped the tape recorder and began wrapping up. (Mrs S told me several times she was determined to see her 100th birthday. She died in 2000 just three months shy of her birthday. Absolutely close enough.)