MARYANNE: And I think patients too, now, are more knowledgeable. They go in asking, whereas at that time they just didn’t have the knowledge.

MURIEL: No.

MARYANNE: And so their trust was in the doctor.

MURIEL: And a lot of them…. when I was in training, were just scared stiff. They delayed their delivery by fighting it and losing control of their emotions and of course they couldn’t have their husbands with them or a coach. And that makes a difference too. They were just sort of taken, dropped off at the hospital and left with these strangers and they maybe treated like sick people. They weren’t up and wandering around or maybe going and sitting in a warm bath or having a shower. It’s so different you can’t compare. It’s so different.

KAREN: So let me ask you about a typical birth at your mother’s home. What would have been the routine: A woman walks in the door and then what?

MURIEL: Well, I guess mum would sort of assess how strong her pains were, how often they were coming, and when they started. By talking to her. And then if they had not already phoned the doctor, but even if they had, she would then contact the doctor and tell him what was going on.

KAREN: Would the lady go to bed?

MURIEL: She usually, depending what state she was at, but usually then would get undressed. Mum didn’t provide gowns and things like that. They’d have their own nightwear. But I remember a lot of them wore dressing gowns and were wandering around and walking around and you know, be up and around until close to the time. And I guess in many ways mum was their coach.

KAREN: Right, that’s what I’m interested in hearing. Was there somebody with her all the time? With the labouring woman all the time? Was she ever left alone?

MURIEL: I don’t think so, like mum going out to the kitchen or something, but it’s all right there in the house.

KAREN: Right, right. Was that part of her job?

MURIEL: Oh yes, that was her role. We had a couch that pulled out and she slept right in that room, she was there twenty-four hours a day.

MARYANNE: She must have loved doing this.

MURIEL: I think she did. She loved babies, she was a very, very caring person.

KAREN: Yes, I’m going to ask you a little bit about her personality. I’m getting a picture of a woman who is very compassionate and yes, certainly committed. I also have a picture of a lady who was tall, like you. So can you fill in the details, what in your mind, was she like. Was she sort of like a mother-hen type, was she efficient.

MURIEL: (Shows us a picture.) The older I get, the more I wonder how she ever did it. She was not a fuss-box, she was a very caring person.

KAREN: Was she sort of warm to talk to, did she… Oh, how do I say this? Did you sense warmth, from her towards the women, or were they…

MURIEL: She wasn’t terribly talkative, she wasn’t a great socializer, but there was a warmth there that people felt they could get close to her. And so many of those people, still to this day call her Mother Jarvis. And other young people around town, my friends, she was always Mother Jarvis. There’s one lady in Luther Tower that still calls her Mother Jarvis. There was that warmth in caring for the baby, the compassion in caring for the women, that she didn’t make a big deal about. But it came through.

KAREN: How long did your mum live? How old was she?

MURIEL: She was eighty-nine when she died. Ron Evans, who used to be the chaplain at University Hospital, was one of her babies. He would always bring up mum, when his grandfather was dying, mum was there in their home. And he said how she quietly went about, like a tower of strength to everybody there, taking care of grandpa but very aware of everybody else. She was not as tall as I am, she was tall for women of that time. She was about five foot seven and a half.

MARYANNE: Do you remember husbands? Were they involved in the births?

MURIEL: Well, in those days they weren’t encouraged to stay with them, but some would hang around. Others would get lost. You might find them in the beer parlour, they had to drown their…. Others had to go back and take care of the family. Or to work, milk the cows. It depended on their own circumstances. But a lot of them hung around at least until after the baby was born. They may not always just stay right there at our house, they may go downtown and you can’t blame them if they went to the beer parlour. I didn’t mean to be critical when I said that.

MARYANNE: It wasn’t standard, or accepted for men to be there, coaching.

MURIEL: Oh no. No.

KAREN: Where would the actual birth have taken place? You said you had a couple beds in the living room.

MURIEL: Right there, in their own bed.

KAREN: Where would you and your siblings have been at the time, during the birth?

MURIEL: Might have been in the kitchen, might have been upstairs.

KAREN: So you weren’t shooed out of the way, told to not come into the kitchen?

MURIEL: No, the boys especially seemed to know enough to sort of get lost. Whenever you came down from upstairs to get to the kitchen, you had to go past those doors, but I guess the boys just kept going when they went past. Of course, different women said, “Well why don’t you let the children come in and see me?” Mother would say, “No they don’t need to,” or something. There was no hard and fast rule to stay out of there. I mean I was back and forth, because of helping with meals and housekeeping and stuff like that. But the boys were involved with rocking the baby and carrying it around.

KAREN: Oh really?

MURIEL: Oh sure. Oh yeah. It was a real family situation. And the women, if they were there ahead of time, they were part of the family. But of course they were kept in bed ten days, it wasn’t as though they were up and around afterwards. Unless it was the middle of the night or something, when the boys sensed it was imminent they just got lost. They probably went down to the skating rink or something. It was no big deal, I mean they weren’t kicked out.

KAREN: Which is interesting, in your family, it was no big deal and yet in many families it was. I’ve heard many women tell me that they sent their own children packing across the street and told them only to return when told. So I find it very, very interesting the way that your family relationship was. It’s refreshing to hear. That you were able to handle it like that.

MURIEL: I can’t really remember mum talking to us about it, maybe because she was sort of matter-of-fact. It wasn’t a big deal. It was part of life and they were part of our family.

KAREN: I understand you don’t have children?

MURIEL: No.

KAREN: Do your siblings have children?

MURIEL: My brothers do. My sister doesn’t.

KAREN: I was wondering just how the experience affected them in their own childbearing years.

MURIEL: The boys, I think were fairly comfortable with their wives being pregnant. But I know they were so at home with infants.

It was a good period of our lives, I think it taught us a lot. When we had three people there once and mum got the flu and she was so sick and this lady had cancer and had to have morphine every once in a while. And I tried to give it once and I was so nervous I bent the needle. So mum had to get up every time she needed this injection, then she’d go back to bed, chilled. She was so sick. I could manage everything else but I couldn’t manage that needle. I wasn’t squeamish, I just couldn’t see putting a needle into somebody’s flesh that wasn’t going to hurt them awful.

MARYANNE: You had a fair amount of responsibility.

MURIEL: We didn’t have electricity and all the washing was done by hand with a washboard and when you think of everything involved. You know, all the laundry, the cooking, caring for a woman twenty-four hours. And a baby twenty-four hours. Mum didn’t have any outside help, ever.

MARYANNE: And not only that, but caring for her own family as well, five children. This sort of blows you away, most of us have two or three children and we feel just so overwhelmed.

MURIEL: It boggles my mind even today when I think about it.

KAREN: Do you recall any signs of, sort of, stress?

MURIEL: Oh. Yeah. I know she had terrible headaches, I know that. And I know that by the time a woman went home after the tenth day she’d be pretty much all in.

KAREN: Certainly if she was getting up at night.

MURIEL: Yeah, an awful lot depended on the baby. If they were fussy, whether she got her sleep at night. You know, you’d be broken at the best of times but if she was up most of the night trying to keep the baby quiet so the mother could sleep.

KAREN: And no crying baby surcharge, probably.

MARYANNE: Did many of the mothers breastfeed?

MURIEL: Yes, most of them breastfed.

MARYANNE: So what would your mother do at night?

MURIEL: She’d change it and walk with it. And bring the baby to the mother and if that didn’t satisfy them, she’d get out of the room.

KAREN: Was the baby in a crib next to the mother?

MURIEL: Well in the same room.

MARYANNE: And your mother would sometimes sleep right in that room?

MURIEL: Oh yeah, she always did. On this pullout couch.

MARYANNE: One could almost write a book about this one woman.

MURIEL: Maybe I should enlist an author and write a book. And she did exactly that.

KAREN: Write her biography.

What would your mother’s procedure have been if somebody had been in labour an awfully long time? Or would that have been a matter for the doctor?

MURIEL: It was up to the doctor. She may have phoned the doctor and said, “Look, do something.” I remember her once or twice getting a little tough with one of them, not with Dr. C—–, though, with one of the others.

MARYANNE: So the doctors would normally come towards the end?

MURIEL: Oh, they’d be back and forth, they wouldn’t maybe stay there for hours. I remember some late at night staying there in the kitchen and reading or something, but usually they were back and forth, because in a small town you could do that.

MARYANNE: Asks about doctor’s cleanliness.

MURIEL: The doctors were very careful in hand washing, sort of what we would call nowadays general techniques, or universal precautions. No gowns or caps. Like mum, sterilized things and I guess I said she used sheets and that, but she also made bigger pads for under the woman’s hips. With cotton and absorbent and those she would sterilize in the oven. But sterilization was done in the oven or by boiling.

MARYANNE: Did the instruments the doctors used, did they stay at your mother’s house?

MURIEL: No doctors in those days always carried their black bags. He carried the chloroform and morphine and ether, except the lady that had cancer, I don’t think mum ever had any stock supply of morphine.

MARYANNE: Were they controlled substances?

MURIEL: Yes. The morphine was. I think they are a lot more controlled today, but morphine was.

KAREN: The mother, when she was in bed for ten days, was she in bed for ten days, or was she allowed to get up and walk around a bit?

MURIEL: No, I think about the eighth day maybe, she’d have sat up in the bedroom. They went home as weak as kittens.

KAREN: That’s what a lot of people tell me.

MURIEL: It was absolutely ridiculous. They were kept flat on their back for three days, well, not literally flat. But they were right in bed. Bedpan use and everything. And then they were given a dose of castor oil. The first three days they were kept on fluids, like cream soups and stuff, and then they were given their castor oil and then they were allowed a full diet after that. Basically, in the forties, when I was training it was the same. It hadn’t changed much in those ten years.

MURIEL: Ether and chloroform also made you nauseated. And it was a rest for them, some of those farm woman worked so hard, just so hard.

Read Part Two of Miss Jarvis’ story.