I interviewed Mrs. T. M on May 21, 1997. I explained that usually I would start by asking a few questions about where the woman and her husband were living when they were first married and starting their family. I wanted to get an idea of their lifestyle, and how things were for them.

Mrs M was hard of hearing so before we got started she told me to be sure to speak up. Even so, there is more over-talking in this interview than in the others. Where I had to repeat a question, I’ve simply omitted the second attempt.

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KAREN: Do you mind telling me how old you are?

MRS M.: Now?

KAREN: Yes, now.

MRS M.: 90.

KAREN: Okay. How old were you when you had your very first baby?

MRS M.: 27.

If you do the math later, it appears she was almost 27. That’s close enough when you’re telling your story at 90 years old.

KAREN: Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about where you were living at the time? When you had your baby? Did you live on a farm, or in town?

MRS M.: No, we lived in town.

KAREN: Okay. And tell me a little bit about your home. What was it like? What did your husband do? That kind of thing. Describe your lifestyle.

MRS M.: My husband worked for the Canadian Pacific. He trained men for the Canadian Pacific. So he was away quite a lot, on business.

KAREN: Did he go away during the week?

MRS M.: Sometimes. Sometimes one day and back the next.

KAREN: And did you have a job at the time? Were you a homemaker? (She had already told me she couldn’t hear well. I shouldn’t have asked two-pronged questions like this.)

MRS M.: No.

KAREN: And you lived in a small house, or a large house?

MRS M.: No, small house. Three-roomed house.

KAREN: And had you lived there right from, you know, the first time you were married?

MRS M.: That’s right, came there as a bride.

KAREN: Oh, did you? Okay. So, 27 is… was at the time, quite old to be having a first baby. Did you feel that?

MRS M.: No.

KAREN: No? Okay.

An awkward moment might have been amusing at my expense, but what follows suggests that maybe she thought her age had something to do with the difficult labour she had. I didn’t follow up to clarify, unfortunately.

MRS M.: But I’ve had problems.

KAREN: Oh, did you? I see. Okay. And so you’d tried to have children before?

MRS M.: No, no, that was the first one. That was our first one. And I was in labour for about 18 hours.

KAREN: Oh, with the first baby?

MRS M.: With the first baby. And the doctor decided that I was too rigid, and couldn’t give birth, so he took the baby. He said it was a matter of saving my life, so he took the baby by instrument, and the baby didn’t live.

If anyone can explain to me what “too rigid” might have meant, I’d love to know. I hadn’t heard that expression at the time I was doing this interview, and I still haven’t. I haven’t been able to find out, either. You can send me an email via the Contact page.

MRS M.: So we lost the baby. That was the first baby. There was no hospital in town at that time.

KAREN: That must have been terrible.

MRS M.: It was really.

KAREN: So you were at home when this was happening?

MRS M.: I was at home, my husband was away.

KAREN: Oh? your husband was away?

MRS M.: He was away at work.

KAREN: Oh dear. So who did you have with you?

MRS M.: A midwife.

KAREN: Do you remember her name, by any chance?

MRS M.: Her name was Mrs. Smith, that’s all I know.

Our reactions appear very dry and matter of fact in a transcript like this, but we were always moved by them. Follow up questions could be really hard.

KAREN: Okay. Do you remember.. can you… Maybe… If this is painful for you, I will understand, but this is part of what the book is about. It’s about how people dealt with the conditions that they had. Nowadays we seem very reliant, very dependent, on our hospitals, on our doctors. And we are very interested in how people managed when they didn’t have the hospitals, and they didn’t have the doctors. So I hope you don’t mind me asking these questions.

MRS M.: I don’t.

KAREN: Okay. So, can… maybe, if you wouldn’t mind talking me through the process with… You were 27 when you had your first baby? And you said you were in labor for 18 hours. Do you remember at what… you know, was it during the day that you went into labor? Or at night, or… at what point did you go into labour?

MRS M.: I think it was all night, all night and into the next day.

KAREN: Okay. How did you call out the midwife? Did you send somebody?

MRS M.: Well she knew I was due, so she was there.

KAREN: Okay. What year was this then?

MRS M.: That was in 1933.

KAREN: And was the midwife living in town?

MRS M.: Yes she was.

KAREN: Had she… did she have training as a midwife? Was she somebody who delivered a lot of babies?

MRS M.: She had experience. She had delivered a lot of babies.

KAREN: At what point did they know, think, that maybe something was not going right, going well?

MRS M.: It was when the doctor was… The doctor was in and out. They could see that I was having problems.

KAREN: So the midwife called the doctor?

MRS M.: Yes.

KAREN: Okay. And after 18 hours then he decided that things weren’t working out?

MRS M.:  The doctor. It was the doctor’s decision.

KAREN: So you wouldn’t have had a caesarean or anything.

MRS M.: Well, there was no hospital. There wasn’t facilities.

KAREN: So they took the baby with…?

MRS M.: A caesarean would probably have saved the baby.

KAREN: Yes. So you lost the first baby. When did your husband come home and find out?

MRS M.: He came home that evening.

KAREN: Had somebody been able to, you know, send for him?

MRS M.: No.

KAREN: He just came home because that was his time to come home?

MRS M.: No. (I think she means yes. Or she is reiterating her previous answer.)

And they didn’t tell me that the baby was gone.

KAREN: They didn’t tell you?

MRS M.: No. I asked to see the baby and they said, “Oh, when your husband comes home, we’ll bring the baby.”

Can you imagine? This took my breath away then, and it still does.

KAREN: Oh my! So tell me about that. How was that for you? Did your husband tell you?

MRS M.: So, yes, he told me.

KAREN: Oh dear. Okay. So how did you…? You planned then to have… to try and have more children after that?

MRS M.: The doctor told me. He said, “Don’t wait too long before you have the next one.” He said, “You won’t have problems.”

KAREN: Oh, he was confident that you wouldn’t have problems the second time.

MRS M.: That’s right.

KAREN: Oh, good for him.

MRS M.: He said it does happen sometimes with the first birth. So my daughter was born a year later, in 1934.

KAREN: Oh really? Super. And how was that?