MRS D’s was the shortest interview we did. She was 79 years old on the day I did this interview. I don’t have the date for this one in the project notes, but it would have been in late 1996. She had eight children, the first five at home. She had her sixth baby, the only girl, in the hospital, because the doctor had suspected something had gone wrong. Sadly, the doctor was right, and the baby was still born. Following her doctor’s advice, she had her last two children in the hospital as well.

This was also one of the earliest interviews I did by myself. I am way less at ease than I am in some of the later ones and I missed several opportunities for follow up questions. You’ll notice, I’m afraid.

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 MRS D: I was living in the country in a little house, near Hague. And there I had my first baby. I had (the second baby) in the house too, but then I had a doctor. The first time I just had a midwife. 

KAREN: So how did you feel about having a midwife, the first time?

MRS D: Well, I didn’t know anything about anything, anyways, so it wasn’t too bad.

KAREN: And had you known much about having babies at all? 

MRS D: No, I didn’t. In those days it wasn’t like it is now, because now, the little children they know everything. So then I had the first baby, my mother was there too, but she was not a midwife, but she felt she would be there because it was my first baby. 

KAREN: How old were you when you were having the baby?

MRS D: I was twenty. 

KAREN: Maybe you can just tell me a little bit about how you were feeling when you had the first baby? Were you afraid? Were you confident?

MRS D: I had very much pain there but I just had to wait, they couldn’t give me nothing in those days. Well, not the ladies, she didn’t give me nothing, you just had to wait. 

KAREN: Did you walk around the house to make it go away, did you lie on your bed?

MRS D: No I was… when it was very bad, the pain, I was lying in bed. 

KAREN: Was your husband with you?

MRS D: Yeah, but at first I was walking around for a while before I was very, very sick.

<em>This euphemism for labour pains, “sick,” was used by many of the women we spoke to.</em>

KAREN: Then you had the second baby at home as well, but this time there was a doctor. Did he give you something for the pain?

MRS D: No, he didn’t.

KAREN: Did you not want anything?

MRS D: Well, I don’t know I just didn’t ask and I guess he didn’t offer me anything, it just had to come by itself.

KAREN: Was that a good thing, you think?

MRS D: I would like to have had something with it. And then the third baby I had in Rosthern, but also in a house. 

KAREN: So what year was the first baby born?

MRS D: 1937

KAREN: And the second? 

MRS D: 1939

KAREN: So every two years then?

MRS D: Just about, yeah.

KAREN: Good for you. Strong lady. 

MRS D: Then I had one that was a stillborn but that was later on and after that then I always did go to the hospital because the doctor then wanted me to go to the hospital because he knew there was something different. And then I had them in the hospital.

KAREN: You said you didn’t know anything about the birthing process at all. No reading. No animals.

”No animals?” Writing this in 2021, I want to insert a laughing face emoji, or a face palm emoji, but I’ll restrain myself. I’m alluding to our discovery that many of the women who grew up on farms had at least a passing understanding of the birth process from watching livestock give birth. Many of the women who grew up in towns or in the city had no inkling whatsoever. Their first experience of labour and delivery was their own.

MRS D: Well, there were animals, but I didn’t think they had anything to do with me!

KAREN: Yes. Okay, after the babies were born, … did you stay in bed for very long? Did you get up right away?

MRS D: No I stayed in bed, I don’t know how long, but for a week anyways. A little bit longer. 

KAREN: So who took care of the home then?

MRS D: Well my mother was there quite a bit and my husband wasn’t working at that time so he was a very good housekeeper in the house, too. 

The conversation that follows includes details about the stillbirth. These don’t need to be public and, strictly speaking, are outside the scope of the project anyway. In the course of the conversation, Mrs D told me she preferred going to the hospital to have her babies. At home, after the pains had started, and she knew she was in labour, she would have to take her older children to the neighbour’s.

KAREN: Was your husband with you? When the baby was coming?

MRS D: Yeah. In the house he was, but in the hospital he wasn’t. At that time, they didn’t let the husband be there. 

KAREN: And how did you feel about that? Did you want him with you?

MRS D: No, I liked it just as good if he wasn’t there.

KAREN: Oh really?

MRS D: Yeah.

KAREN: Why?

MRS D: I don’t know. Then he didn’t have to see how I suffered and everything.

KAREN: Okay. So he was with you during the births at home?

MRS D: Yeah.

KAREN: But not with you during the births in the hospital? Did you have anyone else with you, during the births at home? Your mother, you said, at the first one.