5. A Half-Starved Pregnancy.
My experience during and after my second pregnancy is only one example of what thousands of married working women have to endure. My husband has always been a very delicate man, and was ill most of the time I carried both my children. He had been out of employment eight months out of the nine I carried my first child.... As a last resource was glad to go to work on the railway for the magnificent wage of 17s. a week, and had to walk nearly six miles night and morning or pay 5d. a day for train fare. Our rent was 7s. 6d. a week and clubs to be paid. By the time my second child was born my husband’s wages had increased to £1 1s. a week for seventy-two hours. By that time hard work and worry and insufficient food had told on my once robust constitution, with the result that I nearly lost my life through want of nourishment, and did after nine months of suffering lose my child. No one but mothers who have gone through the ordeal of pregnancy half starved, to finally bring a child into the world to live a living death for nine months, can understand what it means.... It was the Women’s Co-operative Guild which saved me from despair.
The first confinement I managed to get through very well, having some money left from what I had saved before marriage. But how I managed to get through my second confinement I cannot tell anyone. I had to work at laundry work from morning to night, nurse a sick husband, and take care of my child three and a half years old. In addition I had to provide for my coming confinement, which meant that I had to do without common necessaries to provide doctor’s fees, which so undermined my health that when my baby was born I nearly lost my life, the doctor said through want of nourishment. I had suffered intensely with neuralgia, and when I inquired among my neighbours if there was anything I could take to relieve the pain, I was told that whatever I took would do no good; it was quite usual for people to suffer from neuralgia, and I should not get rid of it till my baby was born.
I had to depend on my neighbours for what help they could give during labour and the lying-in period. They did their best, but from the second day I had to have my other child with me, undress him and see to all his wants, and was often left six hours without a bite of food, the fire out and no light, the time January, and snow had lain on the ground two weeks.
When I got up after ten days my life was a perfect burden to me. I lost my milk and ultimately lost my baby. My interest in life seemed lost. I was nervous and hysterical; when I walked along the streets I felt that the houses were falling on me, so I took to staying at home, which of course added to the trouble.
Now, is it possible under such circumstances for women to take care of themselves, during pregnancy, confinement, and after? Can we any longer wonder why so many married working women are in the lunatic asylums to-day? Can we wonder that so many women take drugs, hoping to get rid of the expected child, when they know so little regarding their own bodies, and have to work so hard to keep or help to keep the children they have already got? If only the State would do something that would give all working mothers the assurance that during pregnancy, where needed, means would be provided whereby they could get an all-important rest before confinement, and that proper attention should be provided during and after so long as necessary. It would make all the difference between a safe and speedy confinement, a better offspring, therefore a better asset of the State, and a broken-down motherhood, and a race of future parents who start in life very often with a constitution enfeebled through the mother having to undergo privation, as well as the mental and physical strain that childbirth entails.
Wages 17s. to £1 1s.; two children.