Mrs H was approaching her 92nd birthday when I spoke to her on February 16, 1997. She was recovering from a second hip operation and was using a walker, and moving around was clearly difficult for her. She was a tiny lady, but her voice was surprisingly strong, given her age. The walls of her suite were covered in recent studio photos of her 19 grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. The old photos were stacked on various surfaces here and there. Towards the end of the interview, Mrs H decided to show me some of those. One slid off the stack onto the floor as she reached for them. Luckily the glass didn’t break. Our transcriptionist dutifully typed up what she heard on the tape:

Mrs H: You know since I don’t walk I can’t put stuff away, everything is just packed around. (Crash.)

At the time, I noted that this had been a much harder interview for me than the one I’d done just before, which was Mrs B.B. I had to remind myself that Mrs H had been having her babies a decade earlier. Consequently, she was not as forthcoming with details and we had promised everyone from the start that we wouldn’t press for details they weren’t comfortable sharing. We had a few laughs about how trouble-free her births had been.

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KAREN: Can I just ask you, in general, you had your babies at home?

MRS H: Yes.

KAREN: It wasn’t that you were born at home?

MRS H: I was born at home, too, and (with) a midwife, I guess. I was born in 1905.

KAREN: So you’re 90… 1?

MRS H: 91, going on 92.

KAREN: Good for you. Okay, tell me about the babies you had at home. How many children did you have?

MRS H: Five.

KAREN: You had five.

MRS H: Yes.

KAREN: Did they all thrive?

MRS H: I had a midwife. Well, in fact it was my husband’s grandmother, for the first three we had. And then we moved to Elstow from Allan, and then we had the doctor for the fourth one. And then the fifth one, it was the 21st of December, was such a storm, and we couldn’t get the doctor from Allan, we lived in Bradwell, so we knew a lady that was a nurse one time, years ago, so we got her. My husband ran for her, in the middle of the storm.

KAREN: I’m hearing a lot of stories about babies being born in storms. They choose this time to come.

MRS H: Ya, well he was the only one. We had one born in October, and one in September, and one in May. One in October, we had two in October—A was born October too, but B was born in December, the stormy day. He was the last one.

KAREN: So tell me about your very first baby? That was a boy or a girl?

MRS H: A girl.

KAREN: And she was born in what year?

MRS H: 1922.

KAREN: And where were you living at the time?

MRS H: At Allan.

KAREN: And how old were you? How old were you when you had your first baby?

MRS H: Nineteen.

KAREN: You were nineteen.That is quite young. (Technically, this is editorializing; in reality, it’s me showing a bit of empathy for a young woman.)

MRS H: Ya.

KAREN: So it was common, or it was customary, when you were having your babies, for babies to be born at home? Or had you expected to go to the hospital?

MRS H: No.

KAREN: No? You expected to have the baby at home?

MRS H: Ya.

KAREN: Did you know who to call for a midwife or for a doctor?

MRS H: Ya, we did, we had that all arranged before, because that’s what my husband’s grandmother did. She was a midwife ( laughs).

KAREN: And she called herself a midwife? (i.e. “Did she refer to herself as a midwife, specifically?”)

MRS H: Ya. Well I don’t know if they did in those days, but she brought so many babies into the world it wasn’t even funny. She was just like a doctor.

KAREN: Did she ever get any payment for that? Did people pay her? Or was it something she did for, you know, being neighbourly?

MRS H: I don’t know. We gave her a gift and that was it. She was in the family, she was Grandmama, husband’s grandmother.

KAREN: That’s right. Were you living in town or were you on a farm?

MRS H: We were on the farm at that time.

KAREN: Did she have far to come? Grandma?

MRS H: No, about a three-quarter of a mile from the farm.

KAREN: Can you just… so I’ve got a picture in my mind. I like to have a picture in my mind for, you know, for the ideas that are sort of forming here…tell me a little bit about your home. Was it a big farm? Had you just moved there?

MRS H: Well, the farm wasn’t that big, mind you there was quite a bit of land. They had a threshing machine, their own threshing machine, and…

KAREN: This is your husband? Your husband’s family?

MRS H: …and implements that were needed at that time.

KAREN: And the home itself you were living in, what kind of a house was that?

MRS H: It was one big room and a big pantry, and one bedroom, main floor. And the one room was for the sitting room. And then it had two bedrooms upstairs yet. One bedroom downstairs, and one big room where you did your cooking and eating and everything. And all your living and stuff, yes. On the farm, well, those days, it wasn’t very good, but you made the best of it.

KAREN: I bet you got up early, did you? It must have been a long day, a busy day? Was it a busy day?

MRS H: Oh yes, well, and then when threshing came you have the threshers, you cook for the threshers, and they had their own machine, my husband and his father. And they put the machine away when they were finished with the neighbours and that, and then another neighbour came and asked us to thresh for them because his wife couldn’t cook, nobody wanted to eat there.

KAREN (laughing): Oh really? How come? She just wasn’t a good cook?

MRS H: Ya, and I don’t know, no farmer wanted to move in and thresh for them. So he came over, and he said to my husband, “Would you move over?” They had the machine put away and everything. And he said, “Would you move over, and do the threshing for me, because I can’t get anyone to come.” And he says, “I’ll pay your wife two cents a bushel for feeding the men.” And that’s what I did, and I was a young woman at that time.

KAREN: Coming up to about the time your baby was ready to be born, your first baby, can you just kind of describe a little bit, how it went? Did it go well? Was it a long time?

MRS H: Ya, pretty good. Ya, didn’t have too much problem.

KAREN: So Grandma came, and.. was there.. I just heard a story of, there was one lady having a baby and she wanted to get all the food ready for everybody. That was the thing that she did. Did you do anything like that?

MRS H: No (laughs).

KAREN: So they just had to come and fend for themselves?

MRS H: It was always in the afternoon so we weren’t doing any food at the time.

KAREN: Did you have a long labor? Many hours?

MRS H: Well it lasted a few hours, ya.

KAREN: And Grandma came and…?

MRS H: Things got over, pretty soon, ya.

KAREN: What kind of preparations were customary in those times, to get ready for a baby? What kind of things would you have done?

MRS H: Well, see that you had diapers and everything that you needed for the baby. A bathtub for the baby, and stuff like that.

KAREN: And did you cover the bed with anything special? Do you recall?

MRS H: I think they had some old sheets… They were old sheets, ya.

KAREN: What was your husband doing? Did he help you at all? Or did he stay out of the way?

MRS H: Ya. He was there. Ya, he held my hand, my arms.

KAREN: All the way through the baby’s birth?

MRS H: Ya.

KAREN: Oh great! That’s wonderful. Because a lot of men just… run away.

MRS H: No, he was pretty good like that, because he was able to take the pain that I had (laughter), and some men they run away! (I believe she means her husband was able to handle seeing his wife in pain.)

KAREN: Good for him. Ya. That’s usually what we’ve heard.

MRS H: Ya, they don’t want to do nothing with the… with that. He was good that way.

KAREN: And he was with you for most of the births? He was with you for all of the births?

MRS H: Yes. Oh, ya. He lived to be 84. He died in ’85. He was born 1901.

KAREN: Well that’s good that he was there for all of them. Oh right, one thing I want to ask. Did you have any kind of prenatal care? Did you visit a doctor?

MRS H: No. Not at all.

KAREN: I’m hearing it was quite a private time, it wasn’t talked about much.

MRS H: No. No. (Agreeing.)

KAREN: Had you known what to expect, before you went into…?

MRS H: Well, not too much, and when you’re young you don’t expect with all the pain you go through, but everything went okay.