92. Ignorance.
I feel very keenly myself on the ignorance of young girls getting married and having babies, because I am quite sure some of my sufferings and the death of my babies need not have been.
When my first baby was brought into the world, within a few days of my twenty-first birthday, after three days’ labour and agony, the baby was nearly dead. I can hear now the slaps from that doctor on the child to bring life into him, and my own cry of “Let it die; do not beat it so.” He lived, a lovely boy but a cripple, for nine and a half months, admitted by the doctor to be through the long hours of labour.
A strong point has always been mine that doctors do not give sufficient advice to young mothers. I had to go through the same suffering with my second child, born an epileptic, living three months. My next three girls are alive to-day, spared, I honestly believe, through my own experience, and the fact of having more humane doctors with instruments. My last baby was literally torn from me. The doctor told my husband he could not save both. They dare not chloroform me, and so I had to bear it. The doctor said I must never have another child. I never have, but why should I have suffered? My first doctor could have said that I was not fitted. I had a good husband, a fairly good income, but when I think of poor women with probably indifferent or bad husbands, how do they live? If our scheme could be brought forward, what a help to know that a woman after a bad time could have a longer rest! Oh, the feeling of knowing that the nurse has gone, and you must wash and dress your own baby! Whereas if the mother could be helped—and the money could do this—how nice she would feel, as she could rest with her little one, after having made it comfortable, by having some help with the housework!
We want all our mothers to teach their daughters, not to keep everything from them, as it was kept from me. If we can only get expecting mothers to attend maternity homes—to see they get a good nurse, not a tippler: they should be banished from the profession.... I thank God that a band of good women are working on the maternity scheme for women.
Wages 32s.; five children.