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.
93. Out-of-Door Exercise Every Day.
I had a very natural confinement with both, and a short, sharp time of labour with the first, rather more lingering with the second. My first was what they call a dry labour, and a very sick one—the worst the doctor had had—and it was very exhausting to me. The best times are bad enough, but I was told by the nurse that mine were good times. With the first she stayed a month, and the second three weeks, being called to another case. I think I was very fortunate in having a good mother, who always taught us from childhood how to live to be healthy, and both my sister and I had natural confinements through following her advice when young; that is what makes me so keen on “Moral Hygiene.” Young women do not take care or have proper exercise enough. Ordinary work does not do the harm. I did all my housework and the washing right up to the time of confinement both times, but I did not whitewash or do papering, as I know some do, and then wonder why they miscarry. Another one I know of insisted on the doctor giving chloroform, as she was sure she would never get through it without. Of course, I am very active, while some are indolent, and that has a great deal to do with it; and I made a practice of getting outdoor exercise every day, if not too far towards the end of the time, and at great inconvenience, as with the boy I had piles very bad, and often had to stop a moment or two before I could go on, but of course it was at night when I went out. I also had heartburn with both a short time, and a bad attack of indigestion, which I never suffer from at other times, but which the doctor soon relieved.
Two children.