Mrs S was delightful. We interviewed most of the women in their living rooms and usually, after a few ice breaking minutes, most were relaxed and comfortable. Mrs S invited me to sit at the dining room table. She offered tea and cookies, as most did. And I began, as I always did, by asking how old she was, and how old she was when she had her first baby. She told me she was 96 years old, and that she was 21 when she had her first baby. But from that normal beginning, the interview continued in a very peculiar way. It took me quite a while to figure out what was going on. This eloquent and very gracious old lady thought that what she told me would wind up verbatim, unedited, in the book. She was taking great care to speak in sentences she thought were appropriate for the printed page. Every time I tried to interject to ask a question, I interrupted her narrative flow so she would get herself right back into it as soon as she could. When I finally learned what was going on and was able to explain, her relief was immense.
KAREN: Can you tell me what you remember about how you were living at the time? Were you living on a farm, or were you in town? What was your lifestyle like then?
MRS S.: Well, I got married in the year 1920. In 1921 our first little boy was born and he was a nice healthy little boy. He was born on our homestead, on the prairie…
KAREN: Oh really…
MRS S.: …far away from the doctor and I had a good midwife. Her name was Mrs Siemensen, (phonetic spelling) she had raised a family of ten or twelve and had helped many mothers during childbirth and she came to our place and she did a splendid job. But I suffered, it was our first one and I had a bad tear. And there were no doctors there to sew it up so it was left for a later time and besides that I’d lost a lot of blood. So much so that I was sleeping. I kept going to sleep and they kept me awake, you know? Until it stopped. And I was anaemic for quite some time after. But the little baby grew and grew fast until he was nine months old and we had a very cold house, it was on the prairie and it was a cold winter and he was teething and he caught a bad cold and got pneumonia and he died. That was our first baby and it left us, as parents, very sad. And lonely.
Here, her tone switches abruptly to one of astonishment and delight. But it’s more theatrical than genuine. She continues apace, though, so I don’t say anything.
But time went on and two years later, twins came! Twins came! A girl and a boy. And they were born in the same place on the prairie and with the same midwife and they grew up and they brought much cheer and happiness to our fireside. And there was always something to do and there was never a dull moment…
KAREN: …(Interrupting to try and slow her down a bit.) No, not with twins…
MRS S.: … but they kept together and they started going to school on the same day. And in the first place they weighed five and a half pounds each. But they were healthy and started growing from the time of birth and after a year they learned to walk at the same time. They kept on growing, finally we sent them to… Hepburn already then had a high school and they went on and on through high school and they graduated at the same time and with a high average. And that was the finish of their high school.
KAREN: Wow…
MRS S.: So those were the two little, little…
KAREN: …what were their names?
MRS S.: (Shows me a photo that had been face down on the table. It was of the twins at about one year old.) The boy is I___ and the girl is E____. And E_____ lives in California.
KAREN: Oh, does she?
MRS S.: Yes. And er, well, that was the twins.
KAREN: So can you tell me a little bit about the midwife? What do you remember about the midwife?
MRS S.: She was a Mrs. Siemensen and she had raised a large family.
KAREN: Yeah, can you tell me a little bit about what she did for you? When she came in the door, what did she do for you? How did she help you?
MRS S.: Oh. She had seen me before and I didn’t know that I was going to have twins. She thought so, but she didn’t tell me so. No, she didn’t say anything. She gave me some (unclear) to drink. She said this is very good for mothers to drink before childbirth and when the time came and I went into labour, she was there, they got her and–
KAREN: How far away did she come from?
MRS S.: Oh, it was just a few miles. But the doctors were far and wide! (That startling transition to the theatrical tone again.) Far away. Rosthern was twenty-four miles, you know.
KAREN: Oh, twenty-four miles from Rosthern. So where were you living? What was your town?
MRS S.: West of Hepburn, which is now Hepburn. At that time, there was no Hepburn.
KAREN: Oh I see.
MRS S.: Well, only a few houses, and no doctor or any facilities for women. We had to go either to Rosthern or to Saskatoon. And in winter it was cumbersome, you might not find the doctor, because he was a very busy man. There was also a younger doctor at Hague but he was also very busy and that was only twelve miles but there was little chance of a doctor so I had the same midwife again. She was a very encouraging lady and did her best, you know.
KAREN: How did you feel with her? Were you happy with her?
MRS S.: I was happy, yes. At the time, you know.
KAREN: Did you wish you’d had a doctor, or were you–
MRS S.: Oh yes!
KAREN: You did. eh?
MRS S.: Oh yes, I would have wished to have a doctor. But to be on the safe side, to have somebody, we took the midwife.
KAREN: Did you have to pay her, do you remember?
MRS S.: Oh, she only took five dollars for the first case and then when the twins came she had gone up one dollar, she took six dollars for each baby.
KAREN: Do you remember how much a doctor would have cost. So I can compare.
MRS S.: Oh, fifty dollars, if all went well.
KAREN: Fifty dollars?
MRS S.: But then he would have to come by team, you know, and that was cumbersome and he wouldn’t get there on time probably.
KAREN: Right.
MRS S.: And so, they grew and grew, until five years later, then a little red-haired girl came to join us. Oh and she brought so much cheer to our little, grey home in the west! (This is utterly charming and I am, by now, utterly bewildered.) It made us happy again, you know, after losing our first one. Now we had a boy and a girl. Two girls! (She shows me another picture.) This is A____, with the red hair, she came five years later.
And when she was three years old, G_____ came along, and he came along during Depression years. And he had to fend much for himself because everybody was busy with their own work. But he was a good little chap, he entertained himself, he grew up he was healthy and strong. He was just a fine little boy.
I keep trying to interrupt but she is well into her groove now.
MRS S.: And he sure was a jolly person. Then after about four and a half years of playing alone, this boy D_____ came. G______ was born on the prairie in the same home on the homestead but this boy, he was born in the town of Hepburn where we had a local Goodwill hospital and I had a doctor’s care and a nurse and it was a far cry from all the rest, you know.
KAREN: Now that’s interesting to me. Why was it a far cry? What was different?
MRS S.: Well, the doctor was there, just a phone call and before already he gave good advice and he would come to the house to see me. And whether I was wearing proper clothes and what to do and so forth and the Goodwill Hospital was just between, it was close to where he lived and when the time came (There is a certain awe in her voice as she talks about the doctor and the nearness of the hospital) I was just taken to the Goodwill Hospital, which was just a building that had been remodelled so that they could put in about one, two, three, four or five ladies and I was together with another lady. She didn’t make it, she passed on later. She had a big family and something went wrong. Not with the birth but with her system, you know. But I was lucky, I brought my baby home and he was just a fast moving little chap. He seemed to always be in a hurry and I was much alone with him because my husband was very busy with his own affairs and he was buying grain at that time as well as farming. He had people on the farm and looking after the two places–
KAREN: Okay, okay, stop, stop, I’m a little bit lost. (We are both laughing. It’s at about this point that the spell is broken, and she tells me what she’s been doing. I reassure her that she doesn’t need to dictate a chapter of a book. She just needs to have a friendly chat. She was thoroughly relieved, and relaxed immediately. She had seemed very tense, but physically, not at all emotionally. Notice how her diction changes.)
KAREN: (Continuing from before.) You had a farm and you had another business as well?
MRS S.: Yes, the homestead. The same homestead.
KAREN: Okay. And you had another business as well?
MRS S.: Yes, buying grain and the elevator. That was just then. Grain agent.
KAREN: Oh! He was a grain agent! I see. (I hadn’t seen before, and had been struggling to understand what her husband did.)
MRS S.: He was one of the grain agents that bought wheat in the elevator.
KAREN: Was this during the Depression years?
MRS S.: No, it was after already.
KAREN: Oh after.
MRS S.: Yes after.
KAREN: How did you manage during the Depression?
MRS S.: Oh, that was a struggle. That was a struggle. Grandma stayed with us, she had moved in from the farm and she had no other place to go. And we had, now had, this was the sixth child, the first one had died. But that left five children. But she liked to rock the baby to sleep and probably they got a little spoiled too, but all the same, we got through, you know.
KAREN: And did you farm during the Depression years? What did you do?
MRS S.: Well, not paying wages but the people could stay on the farm. They looked after our pigs and whatever horses there were. We farmed with horses and then later on my husband bought a tractor and he would go in his leisure time to help out with the tractor but there were young horses and older horses that were used on the farm to work the land and there were pigs to take care of during threshing time. I had to take some food down there with the horse and buggy to the gang. There was a gang, you know, that threshed the crop. They had threshing machines. There was quite a bunch of people. There were those that pitched the bundles and those that tended the engine and the fireman and the tanker and also…
KAREN: That’s quite an operation!
We discuss farm machinery for a while. I use the term “discuss” loosely, of course. There isn’t much a city kid from England could contribute on this topic.
MRS S.: Yes. So those were the six children I had mentioned. (We go through the picture naming the children.)
There follows a discussion of the children’s lives as adults. Her tone indicates she is proud of all they’ve accomplished, but her eyes well up when she talks about the nine month old she lost. Maybe time doesn’t always heal.
KAREN: Can I ask you to think again about the days when the twins were born and to the day your first baby was born? How long were you in labour in that first pregnancy?
MRS S.: Oh dear, that was in the evening, it went overnight until the next day about eleven o’clock, before noon.
KAREN: Do you recall that everything was going along fine or had there been problems?
MRS S.: Yes, they did everything for me, they prepared the bed.
KAREN: How did they do that, tell me?
MRS S.: Layers of newspapers on it. Layers of newspapers. And some comforter, or a sheet was placed on. The good thing was, my husband was with me.
KAREN: That’s what I wanted to ask.
MRS S.: He was with me.
KAREN: See, many husbands would pace up and down in the kitchen or they’d go out to the yard, but your husband stayed with you?
MRS S.: Yes. My husband stayed with me and finally my parents from Waldheim came and then my husband’s parents. Well, my mother-in-law. So they were there but they couldn’t do anything, you know.
KAREN: Were you aware that there was danger? When you had this bad tear, were you frightened?
MRS S.: I was a greenhorn. I didn’t know what it was, but they knew. The midwife knew. And she kept on talking to me and talking to me. “Don’t fall asleep, not just now. Wait a little while.” And I closed my eyes, I wanted to go into a deep sleep.
No repairs of this tear were attempted at the time, and I’ve chosen to omit our discussion about possible reasons for that, and the results of the decision. The discussion was, technically, within the scope of the project, but the details don’t need to be on here.
MRS S.: I managed to come through with it. I think that if I’d been in a hospital at that time and had a doctor’s care, it would have been better.
KAREN: What was it like when you had the twins? Did you have any repetition of that?
MRS S.: I didn’t have nothing of that. Because the first baby was bigger, was larger. These two babies were five and a half pounds.
KAREN: How heavy was your first baby, do you remember?
MRS S.: Oh, he was, well, they weighed him, he was eight pounds.
KAREN: Oh really. So he was a good bit bigger than these two. (It is clear that I knew nothing about twins back in 1997.)
MRS S.: Yes, these were smaller, they were five and half. The boy was born two hours after the girl.
KAREN: Oh really? That much longer?
MRS S.: Yes, and then the midwife said, “I don’t think we’re going to get the next one out alive.”
KAREN: Oh what a terrible thing. How did you feel when she said that?
MRS S.: It was too long, the interval. And I said, well, I would like to keep it so much because our first baby had been a boy and now we had a girl, it would be so nice to have the next one. And she says, “We do what we can.” And I don’t know what she did but she… The feet were already… It was a breech and I didn’t have the strength and she just pushed back and it (unclear). And the labour pains came again and after awhile, he came right.
KAREN: Did he?
MRS S.: Yes, and with a lusty cry he came into the world. (A minor relapse into a dramatic tone. Perfectly understandable.) And everything was all right. But all that delay, it was probably… The cord was twisted around him and it was pretty tight but it all could be unwound and–
KAREN: So it didn’t choke him at all? It was tight but it didn’t choke him?
MRS S.: No, it was around the throat and around the arm.
KAREN: Really? So who was helping you when you had the twins? You had the midwife, was your husband there again?
MRS S.: Oh yes, he was home, he was home with me all the time. See, the father-in-law, he went and got the midwife so I wasn’t alone, my husband was with me. That was the good part. Then, with A______, it was a different lady, she had also raised her own family.
KAREN: Oh you didn’t have Mrs. Siemensen with A______?
MRS S.: No, I had a different lady. She was an elderly lady, she was not as well experienced. But there were no difficulties, it just took longer time. The labour pains were there for a long time and finally it just came normally, and everything was all right. She was well and happy. When G_____ came I had an old, retired nurse that was an immigrant from Europe and she seemed to know her business. He was one of my biggest babies and it didn’t seem to be more difficult. It just went natural and I became well again and then when the last one came it was the doctor. I don’t even know what happened, he’d given me some anaesthetic, you know. Whenever the pains got big he’d give me something.
KAREN: Did he hold a mask over your face? What kind of anaesthetic did he give you?
MRS S.: I think it was ether but I don’t know.
KAREN: Do you remember having D______? Or were you kind of sleepy at that point?
MRS S.: Yes, I remember. Once he’s in the birth canal, he just wants to get out.
KAREN: Right, but you weren’t unconscious?
MRS S.: No.
KAREN: No. Okay.
MRS S.: In between I was always there.
KAREN: Okay, okay, that’s what I want to know.
MRS S.: I know pretty well everything. It all happened before breakfast.
KAREN: Good, that’s civilized!
MRS S.: Yeah! That was the doctor.
KAREN: So what was it like staying in the hospital? How did you find that?
MRS S.: Oh, there were two nurses in that hospital–
KAREN: Just two?
MRS S.: Yes, and they were alternately with me and they were taking good care of me. The doctor was there at the beginning and it was too early, and then he went across the street to his home. And so that they would call him when it was about time. So he wasn’t there all the time.
KAREN: But somebody was there all the time?
MRS S.: Yes, the two nurses, they were available. And then when the time came he was there to give me the, the stuff (She’s miming a mask in front of her mouth and nose) and as time went on, it all came naturally.
KAREN: Was your husband with you for D____s’ birth? In the hospital?
MRS S.: Yes. Not all the time.
KAREN: No. Was he allowed in?
MRS S.: They took me to the hospital and then he took care of the rest of the kids at home, which wasn’t far. He could be there on call just very shortly. After the baby was born then he came to have a look at it.
KAREN: Okay, that’s wonderful. Let’s see what else I can ask you… Because everything came naturally, they didn’t use any kinds of instruments on you, no forceps or anything?
MRS S.: No, he never used instruments on me. But the first time they probably would have, you know.
KAREN: Okay. (Scanning questionnaire:) You’ve answered all those questions… When you were first expecting, when you were first expecting the first baby that you lost, and you said you were a greenhorn, how much did you know about being pregnant, about having babies? Had you learned anything about the whole business?
MRS S.: There was a book that my father-in-law had and it was left at our house. It was in the German language. I think it was way back, he must have brought it from the States. And I studied that book.
KAREN: Was it a medical book?
MRS S.: Yes. And the pictures were even on there about childbirth. And I was very anxious about that.
KAREN: Oh were you? It made you frightened?
MRS S.: Yes, to know what it was like. All just from the book, there was no practical business, you know. But I really experienced it, then I knew what it was like.
KAREN: Then you knew. But you hadn’t been taught? Had your mother talked to you about it? Had you discussed having babies with your mother or aunties or cousins or anything?
MRS S.: No. They just knew I was expecting. They really didn’t prepare me for anything. I know I calcimined the bedroom and–
KAREN: You what? To the bedroom?
MRS S.: I put calcimine on the wall, you know.
KAREN: What’s calcimine?
MRS S.: That’s a kind of whitewash.
KAREN: Oh.
MRS S.: And then I put a border around to make it look nice and that was going to be the room where I was going to spend a lot of time and when my mother-in-law saw that, “Oh my,” she says, “You shouldn’t have done that! If we’d have known we’d have been here and seen to it but now,” she said, “it’s done and you have a fine baby, I guess it’s all right!”
KAREN: She was worried you were working too hard?
MRS S.: Yes.
KAREN: What was your house like? Describe the homestead for me, what did it look like?
MRS S.: Oh, the room was–
KAREN: The whole house, your home. Was it a big house?
MRS S.: Oh no. My husband said he first intended to use it as a granary, and then he made a living house out of it. That’s I guess why it was so cold. It was draughty, but we used the cook stove in the kitchen and we ate in there.
KAREN: How many rooms did it have?
MRS S.: It had a kitchen, it had a bedroom and it had a little room that could either be used as a bedroom, but we used it as a living room.
KAREN: Where was your washroom? Where was your bathroom? Was there an outhouse?
MRS S.: I had the oil paint in there on the wall and I could wash it. And the kitchen and that was just the same. It had tar paper on the walls which I calcimined and I put a border around there. You could order it from Eaton’s. They had a wallpaper sample catalogue and you got your house freshened for a small amount of money that way and you did the work yourself. Later on we added some more, a bigger kitchen on there, an extra one. Of course, then my husband had hired help and it meant a lot more cooking and it was a very busy life and anyways it was a wee bit more… And it was awfully hot in summer.
KAREN: Hot in summer and cold in winter, eh?
MRS S.: Hot in summer and cold and draughty in winter because the outside door leading in, the entrance door, didn’t have no shed, so the draft would come right in.
KAREN: So what did you do for warmth? How did you keep warm?
MRS S.: Wood, mostly, and the wood was green. Often not too dry.
KAREN: Smoky.
MRS S.: Yes, we had to watch out. That could start a fire in the chimney, in the pipes, you know, and so we were always glad when it had burnt out the inside or that we caused it to burn if you put some paper or some kerosene rags in there when you’re home so you can watch it, get on the roof and see that the shingles don’t get started and so forth. We were always glad when that was cleaned out and everything was in order.
KAREN: How would you keep a baby warm? Say it’s minus forty outside, minus thirty-five, how would you keep a baby warm?
MRS S.: Oh, we had them in a cradle, we had an old-fashioned cradle. In fact, we had a basket. I was given that for a wedding gift; a wash basket where we put all the babies in when they were born. It had a long pillow, a feather pillow and it had a lot of padding in there so as to keep it dry and some water proof material. I think we had a rubberized material under it, a sheet, and the little pillow across the top and every baby had its start in that. I painted it ivory and enamel and it had handles and I could carry that basket to the kitchen and hook it—-it had strings, straps—-and hook it over the back and rock it and have it near me when I was cooking breakfast to keep them quiet. And that’s where they all got a start and I don’t know where that basket is but it’s somewhere’s and it’s wore out. (Her tone is one of emphatic ruefulness, if you can imagine such a thing. It’s very funny on the tape.)
KAREN: Yeah, five babies, six babies, it would. So did they wear lots of clothes in the house, did you put a toque on them or something?
MRS S.: Oh, my husband, he would get up at night and put some more wood in the stove and he had bought a little bit of (soft coal? unclear) you know, and put a chunk in for the night on top of the wood and that would keep a little bit of a glow and in the morning with just a little bit of kindling get it going again. But it was cold. I don’t know that the water pail ever froze just altogether, with ice during the night. It wasn’t that cold, but it was draughty. Because it didn’t have a shed the entrance door came directly from the outside and having built it to make a granary not so much care was taken to make it very warm. My husband never put straw or anything like that around the house, around the foundation, for winter but he would tar paper and shovel snow.
KAREN: I do that myself around the patio doors and that works.
MRS S.: Yes, and that would stop the floor from being too draughty. And that was the one good thing.
KAREN: When did you move into, like a regular house, a house built as a house?
MRS S.: Well, we stayed there for about twelve, thirteen years and, you know, they were going to school already and we were far away from the Hudson Bay School. And my husband didn’t like the idea of always taking the children back and forth so he got a job in town as a grain agent at the elevator. And we moved to town for the winter but I had to stay on the farm in spring while seeding, for the hired men and during harvest time until threshing was over. And then I was always moving back and forth, preparing food at the weekends–
KAREN: That’s a busy life, isn’t it?
MRS S.: Oh! It’s not all roses, but looking back now at it, I can’t say that it was impossible.
KAREN: No. You do it. That’s what’s so interesting to us, about these stories, women, people did what they had to do and they did it without complaining.
MRS S.: Yes, I never thought that it was so hard at the time. And traveling with the horses too, we had a (top? Unclear) buggy and after we had the first Tin Lizzy.
KAREN: What’s a Tin Lizzy?
MRS S.: I didn’t need a licence.
KAREN: Oh that’s a car, is it?
MRS S.: I drove the children over to the house and bathed them but then later, when we had the buggy that was so nice and tame, the twins drove the horse and took little A_____ in the middle. The three of them, they drove to Hepburn. That’s the way we carried on.
KAREN: Did you, when you were having your babies, did you receive any gifts?
MRS S.: Well, my mother had been secretly sewing and she had nighties made and she brought them over for the twins.
KAREN: Why did the midwife not tell you you were having twins, or that she thought you were having twins?
MRS S.: I don’t know. She thought I’d worry, I think.
KAREN: Okay. That’s fair enough.
MRS S.: To cause less worry.
KAREN: Maybe she wasn’t sure.
MRS S.: No, she didn’t know for sure but she said, “You were so filled up, you were so tightly filled up.”
KAREN: Did you suspect anything?
MRS S.: There was lots of movement.
KAREN: Arms and legs everywhere?
MRS S.: Yes, and hardly ever any peace, you know. I was young, I was very young, I went with the years, you know.
Because she was born in 1900, she was twenty-three years old in 1923 when she was having the twins.
KAREN: Does the act of having a baby make you proud? Do you feel like you did something special?
MRS S.: (She didn’t understand the question, but her answer was interesting, nonetheless.) No, they (meaning pregnant women) stayed home. Yes, they would come as long as it was not noticeable, the figure didn’t show it. But after that, they stayed much at home, especially if you had another child already to hang onto and take care of, but the women did not appear in public as much. (She’s meaning, then, no, she was not proud in this sense. Contrast Mrs S’s feelings about this in 1923 with Mrs N. B’s feelings ten years later.) But, I don’t know, I was proud after I had them.
KAREN: I’m just interested in the act of having a baby, did it make you feel like a strong person? Or was it just something that women did? How did you feel? Did you feel, wow, I did something really good?
MRS S.: I don’t know, I was given the strength it seems, from somewhere. I don’t know, but I received strength each day to carry on and I was on my feet all through, to the last day. The doctor thought that having a little exercise was good, only not the heavy work, the lifting and struggling with things like that. I know some women, they did a man’s work, you know, and raised a large family of boys. But my husband did the heaviest work. He always had help outside for looking after the stock and that meant a little extra cooking.
KAREN: There was a growing sense at the time, this might have been in the thirties and forties, that having a baby in the hospital was the modern way to do things–
MRS S.: Yes.
KAREN: Having a baby at home was almost old-fashioned.
MRS S.: Yes. That’s right. (Emphatically.)
KAREN: That’s how you felt?
MRS S.: That’s right, yeah. My parents weren’t quite that bad, but my mother-in-law, she had all her babies at home and she thought that was unnecessary.
KAREN: Unnecessary to have them in the hospital?
MRS S.: To have a doctor. So it was taken for granted I was staying home.
KAREN: Did money enter into it? Did you have to think about money? How much you could afford to pay?
MRS S.: Yes. Oh, we couldn’t afford it. Why, it only cost five or six dollars to have the midwife but the doctor wouldn’t come out unless he got fifty dollars.
KAREN: Fifty dollars. That was a lot of money in those days.
MRS S.: Yes it was a lot of money at that time. For a young couple, you know.
KAREN: Do you think you have gained any special wisdom, or any special insights, from your birth experiences?
MRS S.: Yes I have. Yes I have. You know, now when I look back, I’m glad it just happened the way it did, and I know now that things would have been better and what I would have done if it had been different. The experience has done me a lot of good.
KAREN: It’s done you a lot of good?
MRS S.: Yes, it’s done me good. But I think it’s better to have hospital care and a nurse to take care of you, and the doctor. I think that’s all the best thing, especially for the first, also for any baby because a mother loses strength and she may have a more difficult time with one of the others. You can never tell. It’s better to go to a hospital.
KAREN: And you would have, if you could?
MRS S.: Yes, nowadays the doctor wouldn’t come out, you know, but at that time they did.
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