101. Two Children in Eighteen Months.
I have only had two children. I was married at the age of twenty-three. My husband was twenty-five. I had been married just eleven months when my first baby was born. Now, as soon as ever I knew I was pregnant, I set about (with the help of a considerate and helpful husband) taking the greatest care of myself for the sake of the babe unborn, in such things as diet, exercise, fresh air, etc. I did no very heavy work. My husband and I did the washing in the evening, he did all the dollying and wringing, and helped me in many ways. The result was I had a fine and healthy baby, and during pregnancy I was so well myself, and I had everything a working man’s wife could have to make things as easy as possible. I had no worry of any kind, and that I consider a great comfort to a woman.
At my confinement I had a doctor and a nurse, and if I had not had what I believe is called a dry labour, I should have had the easiest of times (and they are bad enough), but the water broke at 6 a.m., and my baby was not born till 4.30 p.m.
My baby was never the slightest trouble. I had been in the nursery before I was married, both as nurse and nursery governess, so my baby had all the care and attention I had been taught to bestow on babies. I was sorry to find, when my baby was a year old, that I was again pregnant. I had breast-fed my baby up till then, for she had cut no teeth till she was eleven months old, although she was strong and well and running about at nine months old; of course, I weaned her at once. We were very disappointed to find I was going to have another baby so soon after the first. We had not intended this to happen. However, I made the best of it, and had a son when the daughter was eighteen months old. I was not so well carrying the second baby, and he was as great a handful when a baby as my first baby was no trouble, and by the time he was six months old I was very weak and ill. I think having the two children so quickly, and nursing my first baby so long, had been a great strain. The second child was not so strong a baby as the first. He suffered from teething eczema, and I lost a great deal of rest. My second confinement was fairly good, although I had thought the baby was coming two or three times before he came, labour pains came on and went away; and when my boy was born the doctor said if he had been another half-hour in the birth, he would have been dead. I should have sent for a doctor a week previously, but not knowing the exact time to expect my baby, I did not want to send for the doctor until it was really necessary.
I never had any more children. I was ill and weak for a long time while having to nurse my second baby, and having them so quickly. How women, and poor women, can have children year after year, is a marvel to me. I know of cases here close to where I live, where a consumptive mother is having babies nearly every year. To me it seems terrible, bringing such children into the world, a burden to their parents, to themselves, and to the nation, for they are only wrecks, and fill our hospitals, mental deficiency schools, and prisons. But the cases are so common. Where they are poorest, where they have not enough to live on and keep their present family decently, they still have more children.
I am sure there is great need for thought and care being given to the mother previous to childbirth and afterwards, and I do feel that a scheme as is suggested is a good one, and that the public health authority should deal with all maternity cases. It would mean untold happiness to the coming generations. It will be grand to get a maternity benefit such as you suggest, and it is most necessary. We have some women in the Guild who feel we should be more independent than take such sums as maternity benefit. They do not realise that we pay rates and taxes just as property owners do, though indirectly.
How some of our poorest women exist year after year, bearing all, I cannot understand. For, if having two children, as I did, in eighteen months wrecked my health, which it did for a long time—and only through having one of the best of husbands was I helped to pull through—I wonder what so many other less fortunate women suffer. It is just slavery and drudgery.
Wages 28s.; two children.