MARYANNE: Can we ask you, after you’d had your babies, did you feel that you’d gained any wisdom, any insight?

MRS D: Well, one thing I felt after I had the first one was that I was not going to do that again. (Laughter) So she was three years old by the time the next ones were born so we had a little time to gather up a little bit of money. You know. We had bought a farm, we were on our own, had an old car.

KAREN: So did you feel it was sort of a modern improvement to go into a hospital and have your babies?

MRS D: We knew there were hospitals and doctors before. It wasn’t because we didn’t know about them, it was because we thought we were saving money. A silly way to save it but that’s how it was.

KAREN: It all worked out fine though. You got a healthy baby out of it.

MRS D: It could have happened the other way too. Many a mother died in those days. Haemorrhaging.

MARYANNE: You had heard about that?

MRS D: Oh yeah, well, I really didn’t think about it. But I knew about it. Yes I think I knew about it. Mothers died but why, I didn’t know.

MARYANNE: But you knew that mothers died in childbirth?

MRS D: Mm-hmm.

MARYANNE: Can you remember, at that time were there any rituals or superstitions during pregnancy or during birth?

MRS D: Nothing. The only thing my mother used to tell me I shouldn’t bend. I used to have a habit of bending down underneath the fence. She used to say, “Don’t do that. The baby might get the cord around its neck.” That’s what she did tell me. I never even thought of it, but that’s what she did tell me.

MARYANNE: Did any one of your birth experiences bring back any fond thoughts for you?

MRS D: Well, when the twins came. I was happy that the first one was a healthy child, she seemed to be quite smart and all. Then when we, I had wished for twins.

MARYANNE: There were twins in your family?

MRS D: No. But I had wished I had twins. I thought it was interesting to have twins and after she was born I thought, “Why did I ever think I wanted twins?” (Laughs) And then I had twins after that and I thought, “Well, I’m really blessed.”

MARYANNE: Do you have any thoughts of your experiences bringing back any unpleasant memories? The pregnancy or the birth?

MRS D: The only unpleasant thing I remember was the clothes we had. We didn’t have any maternity clothes. And everything was too short in the front. (Laughs) No, we didn’t have maternity clothes. And it was hard to put something on that would fit. In the first place we couldn’t go out and buy a bunch of new stuff just for the nine months that you were pregnant so we just wore what we had and we looked ridiculous.

KAREN: So that’s why you didn’t tell people! That’s why you stayed indoors. (Laughing)

MARYANNE: Did you make your own clothes?

MRS D: I didn’t make my own clothes but my aunt was a seamstress and she made clothes for us.

MARYANNE: So she probably didn’t make them special?

MRS D: Well, not at that time no. I didn’t have anything made at that time.

KAREN: But your regular clothes, weren’t they fitted? Didn’t they have darts and seams and things?

MRS D: Hmm… Now I gotta remember, I don’t know. Maybe they weren’t all fitted. And if they did, we had a lot of tie-backs, so those would fit for a while because those generally were quite loose.

KAREN: Was your mum with you? I know your grandma was.

MRS D: They were both, no, they weren’t able to come. Actually, on a Sunday morning before my first baby was born I saw my parents driving by to visit someone. My husband wanted to go on and tell them and I wouldn’t let him. They don’t have to worry about it.

KAREN: So his mum was with you?

MRS D: Not his mum, my grandmother. This was my dad’s mother.

KAREN: Right. Okay.

It takes an embarrassingly long time for this to stick in my brain. The midwife was her paternal grandmother.

MRS D: So when they came back in the evening, then we told them.

KAREN: Briefly about the money. This is something we hadn’t actually touched on before. In terms of sort of proportionally (to their income, is what I meant, but I didn’t make myself clear at all) was it a large sum of money you would have had to pay the hospital?

MRS D: I think it was about $5.00 a day, it wasn’t very much.

KAREN: But back then, in terms of your income, it must have been considered quite a lot?

MRS D: Well, when we got married, we had nothing. My husband had a little bit of grain which amounted to maybe $500.00 if he would have sold it, and I had nothing. My parents gave us a cow and a few chickens and we bought ourselves a little old stove, not an old one, a new one but it was very… $30.00 or something like that. We had a bed and a dresser. Our furniture was all second-hand otherwise. We got a kitchen set for $5.00 at a sale.

KAREN: So $5.00 a day, if you were in hospital ten days…

MRS D: That was a lot of money.

MARYANNE: How about the doctor? Do you know how much doctors cost?