MURIEL: Well, it depended. Sometimes it seemed as if we always had someone extra there, but that’s from a kid’s eyes too. But those things seemed to come in groups. There’d be several quite close and then two or three months when there was nothing. Or there may have been two or three months where in the meantime she did go out to someone’s home.

KAREN: Were there any others that you assisted at?

MURIEL: Well, I helped some but I guess after that it always seemed more routine and they were more routine.

KAREN: That was a baptism by fire for you. Did you like helping?

MURIEL: Oh I loved it.

KAREN: Oh you did? So you got over your five year old worries about the crying babies?

MURIEL: Oh yeah. Oh no I loved it.

MARYANNE: Where were you in your own family?

MURIEL: I was the oldest.

MARYANNE: So you were in charge of a lot of babies, then.

MURIEL: I remember trying to do homework with a baby on my lap. So tired. But it was good. I remember one other one, I wasn’t home, the lady was coming in from east of Kenaston, and I guess they were… whether they didn’t get much warning or they waited too long, the head was presenting and they were coming over theses bumpy roads in the truck, and so the child did come out pretty damaged. She lived only to about seven. But that was another one that mother carried around and nursed so carefully.

KAREN: She sounds very dedicated.

MURIEL: She was. Very.

KAREN: Is the home where you were living, where you were doing this, is it still standing?

MURIEL: No. To us it’s a good thing, it was an older couple that bought it and it was allowed to deteriorate and it got so I wouldn’t even drive down the street because it broke my heart. Now it’s gone and we had a big yard with tree lots and tree houses in them so it doesn’t even seem like the same area.

KAREN: Describe the home a little bit, what did it look like, it sounds like it was a big place.

MURIEL: It was a square building, and downstairs it had very much the usual kitchen and dining room, but it had a very large living room that had windows on the south and east. And so it was a nice bright room. And it had three bedrooms upstairs.

KAREN: And it was right on Main Street?

MURIEL: Fairly main, yeah, not the street where the stores and that were but pretty well in the centre of town.

KAREN: Would it have been known as a fairly well-to-do home?

MURIEL: Well, it was a well-built home. I don’t think it was a terribly old building when mum bought it, like after dad died. Her father lived across the street. And there was, of course in Kenaston, they knew everybody, but you know it was friends who had built it, it wasn’t a terribly old building when she had bought it. But no running water, no electricity.

KAREN: So when you were running backwards and forwards carrying water, you were carrying backwards and forwards from the stove, then?

MARYANNE: Yeah? Wow. Did you have a pump in the house?

MURIEL: We had a pump from our cistern, but we carried water from a well down the street.

MARYANNE: Do you remember, did your mother have more than one, ever, at a time?

MURIEL: As far as I can remember, she never had more than one maternity case, she had maternity and a couple others, at the same time, like we’ve had, I remember three and one baby there at the same time. One had cancer, another, an older person, I think, just ill with pneumonia.

MARYANNE: And do you recall, from that day there were a lot of deaths, babies lost in birth and mothers lost in birth, do you recall if your mother…

MURIEL: We never lost a baby, but one mother developed complications and they had to bring her up to Saskatoon and she died. Somehow, in the move from Kenaston to Saskatoon, mother lost her little record book. So I don’t know exactly how many babies she was involved with.

MARYANNE: The doctor was close? How far away was the doctor?

MURIEL: Oh, right in Kenaston, he was right in Kenaston. I remember she was a couple miles out of Kenaston with a woman who’d just had a baby, and then about 4 o’clock in the morning there was a banging on the door and there was another patient who’d just arrived from Bladworth. I was scared stiff, I thought I’m going to be caught here. However, they got mum home in time. I had everything pretty well ready.

MARYANNE: So thirteen was your first experience of labour, were you included afterwards, then?

MURIEL: Not as a rule, unless they needed some help or something. Like in this case with this woman arriving and mum wasn’t there yet and I had to get some of the initial preparation going and get the room set up and make sure there were supplies and sterilize things in the oven and boiling and things like that.

KAREN: Would women have booked in advance?

MURIEL: Usually, yeah.

MARYANNE: This may sound like a funny question, birth can be a messy affair, so there were special things for that?

MURIEL: Mm hmm. Usually, well it was mostly a bunch of old sheets that she kept. We didn’t have plastic, of course, in those days. But there was this what we called an oil table cloth which was a different preparation but was sort of like plastic cloths today and she’d have that on the bed under the sheets and things but things weren’t disposable in those days. They were soaked and washed and used again. At times she used a fair amount of newspaper but we didn’t have that many newspapers, to tell the truth. Newspapers are very good for that kind of thing, you know. And then of course pads were made of absorbent cotton and cloths, dressings for the baby. Only of course in those days I think they dressed them and bandaged them up in cloth and dressed them to the nth degree. One mother arrived without anything for the baby.

KAREN: Oh really? Was it because she couldn’t afford them? Or she hadn’t thought of it?

MURIEL: Not too sure.

MURIEL: It wasn’t her first, whether she thought mother provided everything, I’m not sure. I remember mother scrambling around, phoning friends who’d had babies, within the last two years. She didn’t keep anything like that. She had some extra diapers but not anything like that.

MARYANNE: Do you recall, in a general sense, all of the births, that things seemed to go generally well? Were there a lot of major problems?

MURIEL: I don’t really recall anytime when there were real problems, such as hemorrhaging or anything like that. Things seemed to go very smoothly. And there was more than one doctor, I think, he left and there were a couple more. It wasn’t that original doctor that was drunk that time, but things seemed to go very smoothly, I mean they worked so well together. You know and I guess working together like that they got to know each other very well.

KAREN: Did your mother ever turn anybody away, for any reason? Would she have said, sorry, I can’t handle this?

MURIEL: I don’t think so, I don’t think so.

KAREN: Would they have been getting prenatal care from the doctor?

MURIEL: They may have seen the doctor, they may not have. They may have seen him once, not like today.

KAREN: Did they have a way of identifying, say a high-risk case, or somebody who really should be in a hospital.

MURIEL: Well there probably was by the doctor, but I don’t know. You know, in those days, maybe they saw the doctor once or twice, there wasn’t prenatal care like today. I don’t know if their blood pressure was ever taken. It was never taken at our place.

MARYANNE: Do you recall, then, the ether and chloroform that was used, was that used a lot in each delivery or was it used as asked for or as needed.

MURIEL: Well, I would say, more as needed, as I said before, it wasn’t a deep anesthesia, you know, just enough to kind of numb their senses and the edge of their pain. They certainly didn’t lose consciousness.

KAREN: Was there a sense that pain relief was becoming fashionable, had become fashionable, was the done thing? Or was there a sense that this was a new and modern thing? Amongst the women you recall?

MURIEL: I think they considered it routine, to have some anesthetic.

KAREN: It’s interesting, different decades say different things. In the 1920s it would not have been considered routine.

MURIEL: No, that’s right.

KAREN: Once you get into the thirties it was routine and then the forties it was sure they’d have it, and now it’s going back the other way again. You get some who still make that choice, but it’s natural childbirth that’s the thing, much more.

MURIEL: Oh, much more. Much different. I think now there’s much more known than there was then, about the effect on the baby. And when I think of how some people, when I was in training, were practically drugged out of their minds, they were screaming and not very responsive and able to really help themselves. I think that’s very different today. They have newer drugs of course and they have a much more fine way of deciding how much is safe and how much is effective.