KAREN: Then what was the reason you had your third baby in the hospital?

MW: Because it was just the thing to do (laughs).

KAREN: You know, it sounds like nothing, but that’s actually kind of the heart of this. Times were changing, and attitudes were changing, and it became “the thing to do.” So, yeah.

MW: And then there was hospitalization, you see.

Shortly after being elected in 1944, Tommy Douglas’s CCF government began providing medicare coverage to specific population groups. In 1946, comprehensive hospitalization coverage was introduced for all Saskatchewan residents. It is this coverage Mrs W refers to throughout this conversation. After 1946, the cost of a hospital birth was no longer the obstacle it had been. (Source: http://www.dufourlaw.com/ndp/tommy.htm)

KAREN: Right.

MW: That was something that was covered anyway. And, yeah, it was the thing to do. My mother had around six of us at home.

KAREN: Oh, did she? And did she have any problems at all?

MW: I guess she had forceps with the last one, but no, I don’t think she had any trouble.

KAREN: We’ve actually found that the home births have gone very well. And yet the stories of women who’ve had some of their babies in the hospital, those have also been remarkably easy compared to some of the stories we hear nowadays. It’s been very interesting to us, to see how times have changed and attitudes have changed. And we’d made certain assumptions. We assumed that a home birth would be an easier experience simply because a woman was in her own home and would be comfortable. And yet we found some of the older ladies, certainly, they were happier in the hospital, because there the work was done for them (laughs).

MW: Oh, yeah.

KAREN: And at home they had the chores to do. They had no running water, no electricity, and things were simply difficult. So our own expectations have been turned upside down on a number of occasions, but that’s interesting in itself, you know, from our perspective. You live and learn.

MW: The women today, like you say, they have the choice. They mostly go in the hospital. But everybody has electricity on the farms now. And people have to have that. I know my folks weren’t well off at all, and they probably shouldn’t have had so many, but then everybody had kids.

KAREN: Everybody had a lot of them, yes. I talked to a lady yesterday who had seven. Her older sister had 18!  Whew.

MW: Yes  Especially Catholic families that we went to school with, they had big families, anywhere from 10 to 18. (One family) at Allan had 21.

KAREN: Oh. That’s the biggest I’ve heard yet. That’s a lot of years for the mother to be childbearing, or nursing.

MW: Actually, different ones excelled, like the mother would just sit down, and say, “Adeline, you do this, you do that. Janie wants to go to the bathroom.” And, you know, they had the kids doing the work. Where the mothers quite often with big families would sit, and they would give the orders, and nurse the babies.

We segue into a discussion of family dynamics, all of which is omitted, after which we wrap things up.

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