42. “Constant Care and Help.”
I take a strong personal interest in the matter, and will state a case that came under my notice, where a poor but respectable mother was practically ill the whole time of pregnancy, gave birth to a healthy baby, herself left very weak, and a month later taken to hospital, as a last resource, from no particular disease whatever. The doctors themselves could not give it a name. I myself should say that all her strength and vitality went to the nourishment of the baby, and she herself was left with scarce enough to live at all. I did all I could. She had another little one, one year and ten months old, at the time. I had him most of the time before her last illness, and entirely during the time she was in hospital (about three months, I think). This happened last year. The baby is now thirteen months old, and a fine, healthy child. The mother is still weak and ailing at times, certainly not fit to attend properly to her home duties and two small children. She had, previously to the two living, two other children, both still-born. In fact, I think both were dead some days previous to birth. This was before I knew her. I am confident, if more help had been forthcoming before and after confinement, she would and could have been saved much suffering.
My own personal experience is small, having had only three and a half years of married life. My one confinement and its results was enough almost for a lifetime. I was not well for many days together the whole time of pregnancy, suffering from sickness, faints, and severe headaches the whole time. A long and severe confinement followed, and a tedious recovery, and I can honestly say that, though it is over two years ago, I can feel the effects of it still, though up till marriage I did not know what illness was. My age was twenty-eight when baby was born. Had I been a poor mother, struggling along on a bare living wage as many are, I do not think I should have been alive now. But constant care and a good, kind husband, and help with the heavy housework when necessary (though I did practically all the work from day to day myself), gave me a far better chance of life and recovery than many, many of our poorer, though equally respectable members have. For they have neither time nor the means, many of them, to take the necessary care of themselves that they should do.
One child.