MW: Yeah.

KAREN: And how were you feeling during this time in the car?

MW: Oh, alright.

KAREN: You were feeling alright? There was no great panic on?

MW: No.

KAREN: No?

MW: And then he started coming when I was in the elevator!

KAREN: I want to know about that baby in the elevator!

MW: They just got moving pretty fast, everybody.

KAREN: So you didn’t lie down there on the floor and deliver him, did you?

I asked this because my former college room-mate did exactly this when her first baby started crowning before she reached the labour and delivery room. Except that she wasn’t in the elevator. She was still in the parking lot.

MW: No. They got me in bed and then he was born.

KAREN: Thinking back now, are you happy with the way things went? Is there anything you would have done differently?

MW: Birthing?

KAREN: Home birth, yeah, particularly.

MW: Oh yeah. One thing, I developed an abscess, and I had to put him on the bottle, but that’s one thing that was kind of sore.

KAREN: Yeah, about how old would he have been at the time? How old would the baby have been around that time?

MW: Oh, about three weeks. But oh, I had a fever.

We discuss the misery caused by a bad case of mastitis. I could relate, because I’d had the same experience.

KAREN: It’s like the worst case of the flu, isn’t it? Just burning up.

MW: Mm-hm. They’d roll me out of bed and take me up to the doctor to get a shot of penicillin, and I would roll back into bed again, till the next time. I went up every day for about five days.

KAREN: Yikes. I was in the hospital, on intravenous antibiotics.

Okay, when you were preparing for the baby coming, what kind of layette did you have? Were you able to buy things in stores or was that something you would send for from the Eaton’s catalog? How would you prepare the baby’s needs? His clothes, his blankets and such?

MW: Well, I knit all his first shirts.

KAREN: Oh, did you?

MW: Yeah, and with needles that were about as big as a darning needle. After I got them finished he was too big for them. He never even wore them (laughs)

KAREN: Oh, all that work!!

MW: So I had to buy some shirts.

KAREN: So how big was he?

MW: 9-1/2.

KAREN: 9-1/2 pounds as a newborn! Yikes!

MW: All my kids were big. However, well, I knit most of these things, and I did for years, and then F____ grew into these things, you know.

KAREN: F____, your second?

MW: Yeah. So, as I say, it was hard times, and you didn’t throw stuff away like you do today.

KAREN: That’s right. So diapers, and everything, you would make those? You made all the diapers, and everything?

MW: Oh yeah. In fact, one of B____’s nephews was visiting from the States. He was 12 years old at the time. That was before D____ was born. He wanted to do something, so he sewed up about a few dozen diapers, and zigzagged them with the machine, you know. He still talks about that.

KAREN: He would. It’s kind of unusual for a boy?

MW: Yeah. Really, one thing that they don’t do today, is we call bands, that we used to put around their stomachs, their bellies? Some people call them belly bands, but that belongs to the horses. It was usually flannel, a band about so (gestures). And it was usually put on over the navel area. I don’t know what it was for. D____ never had it, they never had that when she was born, but F_____ and G____ I had it for them.

KAREN: Was there ever any trouble with the cords drying off, or anything? I mean, I remember when I had my babies you had to put rubbing alcohol around to dry it off, so… …  But I would think if it was confined it wouldn’t be able to dry off.

MW: I think they cut them longer in those days.

KAREN: Oh, did they? Oh.

MW: I don’t know, some of them said that it supported their backs and, I don’t know. But they all had them in those days. And you put one of them this way, and that way, and this way and that way, they did that after surgeries in the hospital but I know that all the mothers had those too, when they had babies.

KAREN: Really. And the babies had the bands. Were they tied tightly?

MW: Yeah, quite tight. They used the pins, the three pins. The three little pins.

KAREN: Did the babies seem to mind?

MW: No.

KAREN: Do you remember why? Did it have to do with the belly button?

MW: I don’t know why it was done, but… 

KAREN: Because this is the first I’ve heard of it, I’ve talked to a lot of ladies.

MW: Oh! Is that right? Oh, everybody! Everybody did it!

KAREN: Really?

MW: Yeah.

KAREN: I should ask some more.

Thinking back now, over all your birthing experiences, including those in the hospital, are there any that leave you with a really good feeling inside?A feeling of satisfaction, accomplishment, relief, anything like that?

MW: Well, I guess we’d planned to have a family, and we were grateful that they were healthy. Never had doubts.

KAREN: Is there anything particularly strange, or funny, or memorable to you in any unusual way? (Immediately answering my own question). Well, yes, a baby in an elevator (laughs).

MW: But, no, there was no trouble.

KAREN: There was a growing sense at the time, that having a baby in a hospital was the modern way to do things. Do you recall feeling that at all?

MW: I felt that was a good way, I think. I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital anyway.

KAREN: Okay, but you didn’t feel as though that (home birth) was sort of somehow second best, or somehow old fashioned?

MW: No. Because this way when you have it at home, you could see what was going on, you weren’t wondering, you know? So no. I felt that I would willingly have had F_____ at home too, but that just didn’t turn out.

KAREN: Because of the prior surgery, they felt it would be safer in the hospital?

MW: In the hospital.