KAREN: It went okay. Okay, there was a grandma. How many people were in your home when you were in labor? You had grandma helping you, and your husband. Did you have any other ladies come to … ?

MRS H: Ya, his mother was there, too.

KAREN: His mother?

MRS H: Ya.

KAREN: What kind of things did they busy themselves with?

MRS H: Well, they busied themselves with doing things for me, and I wasn’t able to do nothing, I was in such pain.

KAREN: And was it customary for you to to stay in bed for ten days afterwards around about that time?

MRS H: No, I don’t think I stayed in bed that long. I wasn’t the type that would lay around. (Laughs)

KAREN (Laughs): I think I already asked you, but I’ve forgotten. What year was your first baby born? ’22?

MRS H: 1922.

KAREN: And do you remember how long you did stay in bed?

MRS H: Maybe about 6 days, that’s all.

KAREN: Oh, good for you. Well, that’s a nice rest. (Leading, obviously, but it’s still a pretty good rest.) And who was staying in the house to look after the home?

MRS H: Well, we were at my husband’s folk’s farm at the time, and then after that we moved south to their other farm.

KAREN: They had two farms?

MRS H: Ya.

KAREN: Oh. (I was taken aback. I hadn’t heard of people owning two farms before. There were so many questions I would have liked to have asked.) And… so when you had your second baby you were in your own place, but it was rented?

MRS H: Ya, we were, ya.

KAREN: Did you have as much help then?

MRS H: Yes, my husband’s mother came down and helped out. And then he had a sister that came when the mother wasn’t there, and she helped for a few days.

KAREN: Was your mother living at the time?

MRS H: My mother, yes. Yes, but they had a big farm, and there were younger kids than I was; like, there was two boys and two girls below me yet. There was nine living in Allan, and two of them died in North Dakota, before they moved. There would have been eleven in the family.

KAREN: Okay. In any of your babies’ births, was any kind of equipment used? Was there forceps? Any kind of…?

MRS H: No.

KAREN: How about pain relief? Did you have any kind of pain relief at all?

MRS H: Nothing but aspirin, or something like that. That was all.

KAREN: They just give you pain killer? Like a pill?

MRS H: No, there was no pain killers like you had. No. (Laughs) (She’s assuming here, but she wasn’t wrong.) 

KAREN: Would you have taken it if it had been offered, do you think?

MRS H: I think I would have, yes.

KAREN: Did your labours and deliveries, did they get easier, the more children you had? 

MRS H: Yes, it did. Like both the last three were born faster than the first two.

KAREN: And you had no problems at all. 

MRS H: No.

KAREN: No. (Amused, in an ironic way.) This is a problem for us. We’re looking for problems. Well, not only, but one of the things we’re interested in is how problems would have been dealt with at home. Nobody’s had a problem that we’ve talked with (laughter). So just forget that question!

MRS H: (Laughter) I’m sorry I can’t help you in that one.

KAREN: No, no, we’ll find somebody. Had you known what to expect before you had your first baby?

MRS H: No, I didn’t, no.

KAREN: You lived on a farm, you didn’t have animals around the farm?

MRS H: I knew that it would be painful, but I didn’t think it was quite that painful (laughs).

KAREN: It kind of blows your mind, doesn’t it?

MRS H: Ya, ya.

KAREN: Had you been able to talk with anyone before, about having babies, or was it… it was a private thing?

MRS H: It was more of a private thing. I didn’t discuss it with too many people. No.

KAREN: And your husband was helpful. Did he look after the baby afterwards? Did he hold the baby?

MRS H: Oh ya, he was good to the kids. Oh, he enjoyed the kids. And he enjoyed the grandchildren after. Honestly. There… we had one grandchild, well he lives in Saskatoon, he goes to school here. They lived in Vancouver for a while. And they moved back here. And he used to stay when his mother was working, she was a nurse, and when she was working and she had no babysitter, she’d come and bring him over to our place. And he had so much fun with his grandfather. After my husband died… he was just a boy… Well how old would he have been? Seven or eight. And every time he came over to stay with me, he’d always say, “I sure miss Grandpa.” And I said to him, “I do too, so what can you do, you can’t change it.”

KAREN: No, but that’s nice that you can talk about it. It’s nice that he could say that.

MRS H: Ya.

KAREN: Yet, you chose to have your baby at home, or it was just that was the done thing?

MRS H: Well, that was the thing to do in those days, because there was no extra money for doctors and stuff, and..

KAREN: That’s an interesting point (that) people have talked about. One other lady mentioned that money was a thing.

Sidenote here: I did not know that saying something was “a thing” (meaning either “significant” as here, or a concept that is commonly understood or recognized) was a thing in 1997. I would have sworn it didn’t become part of colloquial speech until at least 2010.

MRS H: Ya, money was.

KAREN: I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought money would be an issue. But of course it would be, it was before Medicare, wasn’t it?

MRS H: Oh, yes it was, because… You know, when my parents came to Allan in 1905, and I was born, they came in May and I was born on the first of November. And you know, they had to start from scratch. They brought with them cows, horses, furniture, what they had.

KAREN: On a boat?

MRS H: From the States.

KAREN: Oh, from the States. They came from the States? Oh. (She mentioned this earlier, I missed it.)

MRS H: Ya, they came by freight train, and they had everything in the freight train, you know, their furniture, cattle and horses, and everything.

KAREN: Do you recall how much it would have cost for a doctor or for a hospital? 

MRS H: I don’t know.

KAREN: You don’t know? (Surprised she said she didn’t know, not that she didn’t recall.)

MRS H: ( laughs) No, I never had… Well, we had a doctor when the fourth boy was born. We lived at Elstow, and there was no midwife around, so we got the doctor from Elstow, and he was only out for a little short time. And he didn’t charge too much, in those days.

KAREN: Do you remember how much? I’m really interested. (This would have been in the public record, which I eventually got to.)

MRS H: Twenty dollars… 1927.. about $25 or $30.

KAREN: Oh? (Now I’m surprised because that sounds like way too much money for 1927.)

MRS H: Yes ( laughs)

KAREN: In 1927. That would have been a lot of money, wasn’t it?

MRS H: When A was born we had the doctor. And when B was born, the youngest one, we couldn’t get a doctor because there was such a blizzard. We lived at Bradwell, and the doctor was at Allan, Dr. Rubley at that time. And we couldn’t ask him to come in that blizzard. So the best thing we knew was another lady that she used to be a nurse. She didn’t want to come, you know, really.

KAREN: Didn’t she? Because of the weather or because she didn’t think she could do it?

MRS H: No; it was because… I don’t know, she was worried if things go wrong. I think that’s what it was, but there was no problem, whatever.

KAREN: So when you said you had a doctor because there was no midwife, if there had been a midwife, would you have chosen a midwife instead?

MRS H: Well, maybe we would’ve. But we didn’t run around, we were only up there a year on the farm, and you didn’t know too many people, you didn’t know who was a midwife or who wasn’t. So the doctor was only about five miles from the farm, like, from Elstow, so that was the next best thing to do.

KAREN: How did you feel he managed, compared with your grandma, for instance?

MRS H: Well, he was pretty good, poor old Doc Bacon. Ya.

KAREN: You felt safe in his hands?

MRS H: Ya, I was.

KAREN: When you were first expecting your baby, or when the baby first came, your first baby—well I guess any of the babies—did people give you gifts? You know, like sort of, you know how we have a baby shower nowadays?