140. Got up the Fifth Day.
I feel that we women ought to discuss this question, because working women often suffer terribly at these times with having to get up soon after confinement: I myself being a great sufferer with bad legs through getting up on the fifth day, although I had a doctor and midwife to attend me. But I lived in a place where the women and girls went to work in the mills, and could not get a woman to stay in the home, and I was often left without for many hours. When the midwife came, she advised me to have a bottle of stout and biscuits beside the bed; but I refused, because I had never taken stout, and I thought no food better than that. And I have trouble to this day with my legs. Although well cared for during the last two confinements, it has never remedied the unfortunate position of the first confinement.
Wages 30s.; three children.