My Grandmothers births, UK, 1947 and 1949
I recently wrote out my birth story for my gran and told her i'd be very interested to hear what hers were like, if she wanted to share. Last week Esme and i went to visit and she told me. They're not nice stories, but they do show how far things have come in obstetric care, imperfect as it is. My gran had 3 children, my Dad in 1947 and his twin brother and sister in 1949.
Andrew's birth:
She was overdue by several days (past 42 weeks) and they told her she had to come into hospital to be induced. She arrived in the morning and was shaved and given an enema by a nurse. The doctor then tied her into stirrups, flat on her back and ruptured her membranes with "a metal hook" - i imagine the same as they use now. SHe was then left, tied in that position, alone, to labour. Periodically a doctor would come and check her dialtion. At around midnight she was told to push. She pushed for hours. At 2.30am the doctor said she'd have to have forceps but at the sight of them my gran refused point blank, so instead the doctor gave her a large episiotomy, with no pain relief. My dad (nearly 8lbs) fell out without another push. He was taken away, and then placed in a cot on the other side of the delivery room, she did not hold or see him, no-one talked about him. She was then stitched up (27 stitches). They had no local anaesthetic, all they had to offer was an ether-soaked pad. Because the ether made her feel sick my gran tried to fight off the nurse, who clamped it even tighter. My gran threw up into it and covered the pad, the nurse and herself. The nurse called her "ungrateful" and left. She endured the next 25 stitches with no pain relief at all. When she was stitched the doctor left her, still tied up. My dad was silent, and laying flat she couldn't see him. At 3pm (12 hours after delivery) she was still tied - the nurse she'd been sick on had "forgotten" her. She hadn't been cleaned or untied or given anything to eat or drink. My grandad arrived. The nurses suddenly "remembered" her, cleaned her up, untied her and changed her sheets etc. My grandad came in and my gran said "is there a baby in that cot?". "Yes," came the reply. "Oh. Is it alive?" My dad had been silent all that time, and she didn't know if she had a boy or a girl, or if it had survived birth. She was finally allowed to cuddle and feed him when he was 13 hours old. Her milk never really got going well and she stopped BFing when he was 6 weeks old. Due to the poor quality of formula in those days, my dad has bowed legs from rickets he got from no sunlight (it was November) and poor nutrition in the first few months of his life.
Anne and Nick's birth:
Despite that horrific experience, my gran got pregnant again soon after and had the twins when my dad was 20 months old. This time she was in a nursing home as the hospital had left her so traumatised. Labour started spontaneously around term, gran waited until she felt a lot of pain before going in, to avoid the stirrups, and Anne came first, head down. She was 5 and a half lbs and in good condition. She was taken to the nursery to be weighed and checked and given sugar water. 1.5 hours later Nick still hadn't come down. Rather suddenly an arm appeared. The doctor was called. He came and pushed the arm back inside and tried to turn Nick into a better position (my gran said that "the pain of that was so awful i wished to die". Again she'd had no anaesthesia of any kind) but it didn't work the first 2 times. On the third "go" he got the arm back inside the cervix and managed to manipulate nick's head to a better position. As he dropped lower on the next contraction the doctor hooked a finger under his armpit and pulled him out, and with him, my gran's uterus. Nick weighed 5lbs and was slow to start. He was taken by a nurse to the nursery to be worked on. The doctor pushed gran's uterus back inside with his hand and held it there for a few contractions to make it stay. My gran passed out at that point from the pain and shock. When she came round a few hours later she'd been cleaned and put into a clean bed and the twins were brought to her. By some miracle (probably because Anne had already passed through before the doctor put his hand in there) she hadn't torn and didn't need stitching. THe nurses told her she'd never be able to feed 2 of them herself but she told them to shove it and got on with it. Again her milk was slow to start and she ended up putting nick, who wasn't thriving at all on BFing, onto formula at 4 weeks old. It turned out that he was tongue-tied which was part of his problem but he also had quite bad bruising from birth and took weeks to recover. Anne fed well and was on the breast for 8 months.
My gran never got pregnant again after that. She said they never tried but they didn't use contraception either. She said the pain "never really went away" so she avoided sex. When she was in her 50's my gran had a hysterectomy and the surgeon told her that she should have had it done at her second delivery as the damage was terrible. She'd been living with a severe uterine prolapse for nearly 30 years. Her cervix had obviously been torn during her second delivery and hadn't been repaired and she had multiple adhesions around that area. Both fallopian tubes were twisted by the angle of prolapse and that, combined with her avoiding sex most of the time, was why she'd never concieved again.
I was so shocked by her stories. I never imagined it was so bad. It makes me wonder if the reason women in the western world just accept birth is going to be awful is because for several decades it really WAS awful. There is a long queue of women behind us with experiences like this. She said she was surprised i wasn't afraid of birth and shocked that my birth sounded so easy. I told her that luckily they didn't bully women quite so much anymore and she said that without question the births of her children were the most horrific days of her life, and that though she loved her kids she never saw birth as being anything but a terrible trauma one had to endure. So sad. And yet she said she had only one friend who didn't have a similarly gruesome experience - the woman in question was a farmers wife and the night she went into labour they were snowed in in their valley and the local VET (who was there delivering early lambs) delivered her. No problems, no tears. He just let it all be and caught the baby and tied the cord for her.
Anyway, i thought i'd share. It's important the voices of women like my gran are heard.
Hana
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