Mrs B had the first two of her four babies at home. The interview was about evenly divided between the home birth stories and accounts of the hospital births. We didn’t have all of the hospital material transcribed; even so, there is a lot of colourful local history in these recollections. She mentions several doctors by name in this story. If you’ve heard tales of a Dr. Steele, in particular–apparently she had quite a reputation–this is the story to read.

Mrs B was 82 when I conducted this interview. After first proclaiming she couldn’t understand why we would be interested in what she had to say, she proceeded to tell a fascinating story full of quirky images.

I first asked her if all four children were born at home.

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MRS B.: No, the first one was born at home and it was a difficult birth. And the doctor had to use instruments and his head was injured so he only lived a little while. Just a couple of days, I think it was.

Mrs B notes later that she also had her second baby at home.

KAREN: Oh dear, where were you living at the time?

MRS B.: I was at home with my mother at the time.

KAREN: On the farm?

MRS B.: Yeah.

KAREN: In Saskatchewan?

MRS B.: At Lemburg. That’s east of Fort Qu’appelle.

KAREN: Oh okay.

MRS B.: A little bit north, between Fort Qu’appelle and Melville actually.

KAREN: What year was that, then?

MRS B.: That was 1936.

KAREN: If it’s not too painful, can you tell me a little bit about the birth? Had you expected to go to a hospital?

MRS B.: No, my mother was, not a trained midwife, but she used to go and help the doctor and then look after the patients afterwards for ten days, and we didn’t have too much money and neither did she so we thought, well, between the two of us we’d save a little bit that way. So I was at home when I took sick and my dad went and took the team of horses and… I forget what for, it was in April, mid part of April and he went and got the doctor and brought him out and he examined me and listened to everything and he said, “I think it’s going to take a long time. Because,” he said, “you’re very high.” I hadn’t gone down (i.e. the fetus hadn’t dropped) and he said, “If you could do a lot of walking, that would help to bring it down.” So I paced up and down the hall and as the pains got worse, well my mother said… Well I guess the water broke and then she said I’d better take to bed and he come up and he sat on a chair beside the bed there, watching things how they progressed and he took out his instruments and he said to Mother, “You take these and boil them.” Mother said, “Oh boy, my own daughter.” But anyway, he was used to that sort of thing and he took the baby by force then because I couldn’t have it. I guess he was a big baby for a first baby. He was eight pounds or something.

“When I took sick.” She means when labour started. It was apparently quite a common expression to refer to labour at the time, but I hadn’t heard it till we started doing these interviews.

KAREN: So your mother, she didn’t like the idea of the forceps?

MRS B.: Well, she didn’t just like the idea, because she herself had never had that experience, you see. But anyway, I think his head must have been injured.

KAREN: You think in the birth?

MRS B.: Well, I don’t know, with the forceps I guess. Because he had a mark at the back of his head and two here and Mother said that he was spitting blood quite a bit, too. So the doctor said to Mother when he left, “I’m not expecting this baby to live, because,” he said, “he had a pretty rough time of it.”

KAREN: How old were you at the time?

MRS B.: I was nineteen.

KAREN: You must have taken that very hard.

MRS B.: Well, to lose the baby like that, it was pretty rough. But as they say, time heals and so the next one then, I was home with my mother then and I’d been there a couple, three weeks because it was December and you don’t fool around on the roads when you’re in that condition. So I was there and my husband had come home for the weekend, he was working, and he came home for the weekend and all of a sudden I got this cramp and I just, “Yikes! That’s a little different than last time!” And so he got up and called my mother and Mother came into the bedroom and watched me through a few of these contractions. She said, “This is the real thing, this is the way you’re supposed to do it!”

KAREN: Oh really?

MRS B.: And she said to my husband, “You better go and get the doctor.” And I don’t think he got to town, we lived about a mile and a half out of town but I don’t think he got to town and the baby was born.

KAREN: Really? Was he big?

MRS B.: Yeah, but he was only about seven… six something.

KAREN: And this was a boy?

MRS B.: Yeah. And Mother went down and got a string ready to tie the cord and everything and the doctor popped in just before she tied the cord. She was going to cut it herself. In fact afterwards it was starting to come away when the doctor got there and he said, “Well at least I got here in time this time.” But then he said, “You know, young lady, you keep me up all night one time and then the next time you don’t even give me a chance to get here.” So that was the two that I had like at home, you might say. (i.e. at her mother’s home.)

KAREN: So tell me just a little bit about the relationship between your mother and the doctor. Did they get along well?

MRS B.: Oh yes.

KAREN: He respected your mother, and her experience?

MRS B.: Oh yes. She had worked with him as midwife at different places.

KAREN: Was there any pressure on you at any time, during those first two births, to go to the hospital? Did you feel at all..

MRS B.: There wasn’t a hospital in that area.

KAREN: Oh. Okay.

MRS B.: There was a small hospital at Abernethy but we weren’t too fussy about the doctor because if you had a pain any place well he’d take your appendix out. This was his, I guess they needed their appendix out anyways, but everybody called him the Butcher Man because he didn’t stop for anything if you had appendix, he took it out. Well you know yourself, nowadays, you don’t fool around with appendix either. But Dr ——, he got blamed for taking out appendix when everybody figured he just did it to make a name for himself.
(She means that he did it legitimately in most cases but it wasn’t perceived that way at the time.)) I guess they needed their appendix out or they would have ruptured anyway. You know how a rumour will get going and it kind of spoils the reputation of the doctor. Well then, quite late, I was about thirty, I think, when M______ was born.

KAREN: This is your daughter?

MRS B.: Yeah. C____ was born in ’38 and M_____ was born in ’42. And we were working the (unclear, sounds like “Ludlow”) farm at the time, and we couldn’t see any point in staying at home. (It sounds as though they were farming rented land.) There wasn’t anything convenient at home, and so when I took sick, and that, he just went over and asked Mrs. (unclear) to take me to the hospital. And she said, “Just take the car and take her.” And he said, “Well I don’t like to drive your car,” and she says, “Well I might drive in the ditch, getting excited because of the baby coming.” So she says, “You better take the car and take her to the hospital.”

What follows is a description of the hospital birth the majority of which we didn’t transcribe. The material was out of scope, but the primary reason we left it on the tape is that the transcriptions were simply taking too long already. But here is where we first learn of Dr. Steele.

MRS B.: Our doctor at that time, of course I’d been doctoring (having a baby with a doctor, I think) all the way through, but before I didn’t go to the doctor’s that much. But when I went to see Dr. Steele, about me being pregnant, she says, “Now I want you here once a month.”

KAREN: And you hadn’t had prenatal care before?

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: So how did you feel about that?

MRS sure. So I used to go up once a month.

KAREN: What kind of a trip was it? Was it a long trip?

MRS B.: Well, by car about ten or twelve miles, it wasn’t that far. And anyway… I forget. I guess W_____ got (unclear, but she’s referring to the family whose land I think they farmed) car and took me to the hospital.

Dr Steele tells Mrs B she’s going to have twins. It wasn’t twins, it was daughter M_______.

MRS B.: C______, I was able to nurse him, I nursed him about six months, but M_______ was a hungry one, she had to have something more.

KAREN: Was your husband involved in the births at all?

MRS B.: Oh no! Get out of here! (Laughs)

KAREN: Oh really? How did you feel? Did you want him there?

MRS B.: Well, it wasn’t the custom for men to be in the room when the baby was being born. I know, I suppose, I don’t know what he did. He of course was in the hospital but he wasn’t in the room either.

There follows another funny story about Dr. Steele kicking a fainted father out of the way in the delivery room, saying “The damn fool!” Clearly I need to return to this tape and get the stories written down.

KAREN: She sounds like quite a lady.

MRS B.: She was rough. But I remember, one time the roads were blocked and there was a girl who had tried to abort her baby and then infection set in. She was in Abernethy hospital and Dr. Steele lived in Harris which was another ten miles and the roads were blocked, so she got a section man and she rode down on a jigger to Abernethy and as luck happened, the drayman had just hooked his team up and she had her suitcase that she was taking to the hospital which was completely across town and he says, “Throw ’em on here, doc, I’ll take you!” Because they all knew where she was heading. But she came down to Abernethy on the jigger. So she was quite a doctor.

The last two, M____ was born and then A____ was born in the hospital. Well his birth was 26th of April and the roads were just breaking up so W_____ took me by train and got me settled at Mrs. Mooney’s and Mrs. Mooney said she would see I got to the hospital okay. It was only a block from the hospital.

KAREN: Who was Mrs. Mooney?

MRS B.: She was a woman that everybody knew and she was just a good friend of everybody’s. So I stayed there and this one night I had cramps most of the night and so in the morning I got up I told Mrs. Mooney and she watched me, she was an old midwife too and ah, “I think it’s time for you to go to the hospital.” So we got on our coats and she took my arm and away we went to the hospital and she said to the nurse, “She’s had cramps all night, so don’t be surprised if she gives you a rough time of it.” And I said, “What do you mean a rough time?” And she said, “A hurried time!” And she said, “Be sure and let the doctor know in lots of time.”

Well, Dr. Steele was in and she had an operation that morning and she come in to me and she says, “You let me have my dinner!” And she gave me a tap on the leg and she said,“I want my dinner!” I said, “Well I’ll try to do my best!”

She went home for dinner but it wasn’t long before I was yelling, the water broke in the bed and I called the nurse and she said, “Well, we’ll get you in a case room and we’ll be ready for when the doctor comes anyway.”

And I can still hear Dr. Steele as she came in the door, she dropped her coat on the settee that was there and took the steps two at a time and she said, “Well I had my dinner but that’s all!” And Arvin was born.

KAREN: So what year was that?

MRS B.: That was ’48. Well that was enough of that.

“Well that was enough of that.” I have no idea what she meant by that. It’s pretty funny in this context, though.