by Pam Weaver
There was one lady who during my time in the hospital came in almost every year. I saw her with baby seventeen and eighteen, and then she missed a year. However, she was back with baby nineteen the year after. ‘Hello darling,’ she beamed as I appeared with the new baby. ‘I weren’t ’ere last year. Did you miss me?’ We discovered that she had lost her husband (he had died) but she had remarried someone else before starting all over again. Her new husband was very tiny but she was very large, which had posed a few problems in the labour ward. One doctor had a problem locating the baby, but his mum produced him all the same. The council had knocked two council houses into one dwelling for her ever-increasing family and I’m sure there was lots of laughter in her home. She seemed a very easy-going, jolly sort of woman.
Occasionally we would have an occurrence which was outside of the usual parameters. Elsie Peterson and her friends decided to take a coach trip to the seaside. They booked the coach and from the minute they stepped on board they were having a high old time. All her pals were married women but Elsie was single. She’d looked after her parents until they’d died and the years had flown by. She envied her friends with their families and in some cases their grandchildren as well. Sometimes Elsie felt that life had passed her by. She had nothing to say when they all grumbled about their men folk.
‘My Jack never lifts a finger in the house. I have to do everything, the lazy sod!’
‘Lucky you. My Harry thinks he’s bloody Barry Bucknell!’ (Barry Bucknell was a DIY expert on TV and in his heyday his programme Barry Bucknell’s Do It Yourself attracted some seven million viewers.)
‘I can put up with Tony’s bodgit jobs around the house. What I can’t stand is his dirty socks. I swear, they’re so strong the dog passed out the other day!’
Elsie and her friends laughed uproariously.
‘Count yourself lucky, Elsie. You’ve got a nice tidy house and you can keep it just how you like it.’
Elsie smiled and sighed inwardly as she listened. Yes, she had a nice house but she wished she had a man to grumble about.
When the coach parked up and they all filed out, the parking attendant winked at Elsie. He was no spring chicken but her heart beat a little faster and as she walked by him, he winked again. ‘Have a nice time, love,’ he smiled. ‘And don’t forget, I’ll be here in the coach park all day if you need anything.’
Elsie and her friends did everything you’re supposed to do at the seaside. They took their shoes off and walked along the sand. They had a little paddle and ate an ice cream. They walked into town, had a look around Woolworths and found a nice café with red checked tablecloths on the Formica table tops and had fish and chips. Her friends wanted to go to the pictures but Elsie had other plans: it was time to take a chance on a little happiness. She made an excuse that sitting in the pictures gave her a headache and that she’d prefer to sit in the gardens with a magazine. She almost blew it then because one of her mates wanted to stay with her – ‘You can’t be on your own, ducks.’
‘No, no, I insist,’ said Elsie. ‘I’ll be fine. You go on and enjoy yourselves. I’ll meet you back at the café for a cup of tea afterwards.’
Eventually she persuaded them and the friends parted. Elsie hurried back to the coach park. If the attendant was surprised to see her, he didn’t let on. Before long, they were together on the back seat of the coach and in a fumbling way, Elsie was losing her virginity. He wasn’t a tender lover. Perhaps he was inconsiderate or maybe he was afraid someone would catch them at it before he’d finished. Whatever the reason, the experience was hurried and rough but Elsie didn’t mind. She’d done it at last! She’d had her go at life. She’d had a good day out. The man was shocked to find that she’d never done it before and even more shocked when Elsie didn’t stop bleeding. In the end it was so bad, he called an ambulance.
There was a little bit of a muddle at the hospital because Elsie was brought up to the labour ward. The duty doctor examined her and repaired a tear in her vagina. Soon after she was admitted, I was called to the labour ward because it was the late shift and they were short-staffed. I was told to wait for the baby to be brought up and then take it straight to the unit. I’m not sure why the ambulance men couldn’t take the baby to the unit themselves but after ten minutes of hanging around, the baby still hadn’t materialised.
‘Where’s your baby, dear?’ asked Sister Williams.
‘With any luck it’ll be along in nine months,’ Elsie grinned wickedly.
Sister gave her a disapproving stare but Elsie blinked back shamelessly. The whole incident was treated as a bit of a laugh by some and a shocking indictment on the morals of the day by others. Although we were in the middle of the Swinging Sixties, the old ideals and prudishness were reluctant to go. Friends of mine working in antenatal clinics would tell me that a few of the older nurses would take every opportunity to ‘shame’ their unmarried patients. They knew better than to say anything directly, but when an expectant mum was called for examination, they would shout her name in ringing tones, ‘MISS Jackson …’, thus making sure that every woman in the waiting area knew she wasn’t married.
Although more unmarried girls were keeping their babies, it was nowhere as easy or socially acceptable as it is today. With the advent of the pill, getting contraception was becoming easier but it was still a big deal. Contraceptive clinics had yet to evolve and it meant a trip to the GP, which could be embarrassing for a girl. She couldn’t get away from the nagging fear that he might tell her mum. For people like Elsie, she felt that life had passed her by. By today’s standard she was still a young woman and maybe that trip to the seaside changed her life in more ways than one. I hope she found someone to love her.
The nursery nurses not only fed the babies round the clock but we also helped with other duties. If there was a lot going on in the labour ward, we would walk around with breast pads or cream for the mothers’ nipples. We never examined the mums, that wasn’t our job, but we could do the routine stuff to help out. One day I walked around with breast pads and cream. At every door I asked quite clearly, ‘Do you have enough breast pads? Do you need any cream for your nipples?’ and dished out whatever was required.
I enjoyed the contact with the mums. Somehow I found out that I was pretty adept at getting a reluctant baby to breastfeed. The midwives had been taught how to help the mums but I seemed to have the knack of persuading a cross, hungry baby to latch on and suck lustily, and it wasn’t long before I was being called upon to help the mums. It wasn’t part of my job description but I was happy to do it. The mums were grateful, the baby was well fed and I felt a little glow of achievement. Good news all round!
Most of the mums were excited by the birth of their babies and it was hard not to join in with their pleasure. Occasionally there were the sad times, like when a baby died or was born with a deformity. I am slightly squeamish but I knew the importance of never letting a mother see how I felt, so whenever we had a report that a deformed baby had been born, as soon as the reports were finished, I would immediately go to look at the child. It wasn’t because I was ghoulish, far from it, but once I had had that initial look, I could become matter-of-fact about it, which gave the mum some feeling of security. It was always sad to see a terribly deformed child and we did our best to help the parents come to terms with it.
Baby Thomson had Hydrocephalus, the build-up of too much cerebrospinal fluid in the brain. Normally, this fluid cushions the brain but if you have too much, it causes harmful pressure. Now that we are in the twenty-first century there are effective treatments but back in the 1960s, all we could do was give the baby bed rest and drugs to help ease any pain. Baby Thomson’s head was the same size as an adult and increasing. His reedy cry was enough to break your heart and so when he died a couple of days later, everyone felt it was a merciful release. His parents were broken-hearted but a little over a year later, Mrs Thomson came in again. Of course, now we realise that she would never forget her first child, but everyone on
the staff went out of their way to make this delivery a successful one and we were all delighted that this baby had no problems.
There was a story from the labour ward which could have been a disaster but turned out well. Mrs Smithers’ baby was very flat when she was born. She was blue and not breathing. The doctors had her on the resuscitation trolley and were doing their best to revive her. We had a very old nurse working on the ward at the time. She was probably in her sixties and her only son had been tragically killed in a car crash. As a result Nurse Myers became a devoted Catholic. She was in the labour ward when Baby Smithers was non-responsive after her birth. Nurse Myers glanced at the mother’s notes and saw that she and her husband were Catholics too. She realised that the teaching of her church meant that it was vitally important that the baby was baptised. If no priest was available, the nursing staff could do it, but it seemed everyone’s attention was on getting the baby to live. Nurse Myers whispered in one doctor’s ear, ‘The baby is Catholic. Baptise the baby.’
He ignored her.
The other doctor was Italian. Nurse Myers didn’t know his religious persuasion but knowing he came from a Catholic country was enough for her. Surely he would understand the importance of baptising the baby? She filled a kidney dish with cold water and took it to him. ‘Baptise the baby.’
The doctor looked at the kidney dish and nodded. Nurse Myers relaxed. The doctor took the dish and threw the cold water all over the baby. There was an instant reaction: the shocked baby shuddered and then opened her mouth and let out a furious cry. I’m not sure what they wrote on the baby’s report, but she certainly wasn’t ready for the next life just yet.
One afternoon I was asked to fetch all the mums who had had their babies within the last two days and to bring them up to the nursery. The midwife was going to show them how to bath their babies. We had several baths in the unit so the midwife was going to bath someone’s baby and then all the mums could sit at their own bath and do their babies collectively. The midwife made it look easy but all the mums were nervous. She showed them how to test the water with their elbow.
‘If it’s too hot for your elbow,’ she told them, ‘it’s too hot for baby.’
The baby the midwife was bathing seemed to enjoy the water and looked content as she splashed him a little, talking gently all the time. She showed the mums how to take the baby out and how to dry him while he was lying on his tummy on their laps.
‘He’s much less likely to roll off your lap if you dry him this way,’ she said, stretching out his arm. ‘Make sure you dry all the little creases.’
The baby was dressed in a gown and put back in his cot to sleep. So far, so good but everyone thought their child was made of glass and they were terrified that they’d break. Mrs Brown was visibly shaking as she put her baby girl into the water. The baby baths were facing each other. The midwife was one side and I was on the other. All at once Mrs Brown realised that her dressing-gown sleeves were getting wet. Without thinking, she let go of the baby and began to roll them up. Fortunately I was right beside her and managed to grab the baby up as she slid under the water. The poor woman was mortified and hysterical because of what she had done and it took an army of nurses to convince her that she wasn’t a terrible mother who should be locked up for life. The baby was fine – in fact, I think it was all so quick it didn’t even faze her.
We used terry nappies in the nursery. They were bulky and had to be fastened with a nappy pin. Folding the nappy and pinning it together in such a way that you didn’t harm the baby was a learned skill. I loved the time spent teaching the new mums how to do it and especially the bit where you had to stab the pin in the nappy with your own hand behind it so that it didn’t touch the baby. The tiny babies had muslin nappies – their little bottoms would have been swamped by the terry towelling ones.
I had been in the nursery for about three months but I still hadn’t actually seen a baby being born. Sister Williams called me into the office one day and asked if I would like to.
‘I certainly would,’ I told her.
A little later that day they called me into the labour ward, where a woman was in the end stages of her labour. I was given a face mask and told to stand in the corner, out of everybody’s way.
‘If you feel faint,’ Sister Williams told me, ‘go outside – we don’t want you cluttering up the floor in here.’
I nodded. The woman screamed and shouted, and finally it was time for the baby to be born. For me it was an emotional experience. As soon as I saw the baby’s head appear I thought to myself, this is a living human being coming into the world. With the next pain, the baby slid onto the labour ward bed and began to cry lustily. She was so perfect and there was a lump in my throat as I watched the skilled midwives wipe her clean. Call me sentimental but I could have been looking at a future Wimbledon tennis champion, Britain’s first woman Prime Minister or the nurse who would look after me in my old age.
‘You’ve got a little girl,’ they told her mother.
The woman burst into tears. ‘Oh, a little girl. How lovely! I wanted a little girl. I’ve got a little girl!’
I’m terrible when it comes to other people crying. If someone is crying, it makes me cry too. The more excited and tearful the woman became, the more emotional I felt. By now the tears were running down my face and into my face mask.
‘Outside if you’re going to faint,’ boomed Sister Williams and grabbing my arm, she propelled me unceremoniously out into the corridor.
I felt a little miffed. I should have liked to have seen the whole procedure, but never mind. I had seen my first baby born and the mother and I were thrilled that she had got what she’d wanted.
As time went on, although I still found the birth of a baby a wonderful thing, I learned to engage in a more professional way with the mums. Most of all they wanted reassurance – someone to convince them that they were doing well and would be able to cope with the huge responsibility of bringing up a baby. But not all mothers were easy to talk to, and some had trouble understanding us. We had an American woman on the ward and she became very frustrated because she kept saying that the nipple wasn’t big enough. I told the midwife, who went to see her. She gave her a long talk about the benefits of breast feeding and said that baby would be fine, only to find out that the woman was bottle feeding her baby! The midwife came back to me and complained that I had wasted her time.
The next time the feeds went out, as I gave the woman the bottle for the baby she said, ‘I hope it’s got a different nipple on it today.’
For a second, I was flummoxed and then I realised she was talking about the teat!
The same woman was rushing down the corridor one day shouting, ‘Where’s the bathroom? Where’s the bathroom?’
Someone pointed to the bathroom but when she got there, she said very crossly, ‘I want the bathroom, not the wash room,’ and we realised she was actually looking for the toilet.
If I was tempted to feel superior, I soon found out the consequences of not making myself clear. A few days later I was back doing the breast pad round. ‘Do you have enough breast pads? Do you need any cream for your nipples?’ I asked as I pushed the laden trolley from room to room.
‘Hello nurse,’ said Mrs Light.
‘Breast pads? Cream for your nipples?’ I smiled.
She shook her head and as I was going out of the door she called out, ‘’Ere, nurse, that toothpaste you gave me last time ain’t half funny!’
Chapter 14
I made some good friends at the hospital. Letitia was a nursery nurse like me. She and I used to go dancing at the local Hippodrome ballroom, which was just around the corner from the hospital. Although night life was changing, some of the old ways of doing things clung on. The ballroom had two dance floors. Upstairs there was a room where they had a pop group. It was loud, hot and very sweaty. Downstairs they had a live band that did things in the same way they had done when my mother was young. The band would play three dance tunes and the
n everyone would clear the floor for the next three. The waltzes were most popular because they were a slow dance. A boy would walk up to a girl sitting at one of the tables around the dance floor and ask her to dance. If she accepted, they would enjoy three dances. I imagine it must have been soul-destroying for a boy who couldn’t manage to persuade any girl to dance with him. It was certainly embarrassing for any girl who was left sitting at the table while her friends were on the floor with some dishy blokes. I enjoyed the spontaneity of the pop room but most of all I loved the music in the lower ballroom. My all-time favourite was ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’. It was a song that just about anyone who was anyone had recorded … Connie Francis, Brenda Lee, Tony Bennett, Perry Como and of course, the great Frank Sinatra. Slow and smoochy, it was especially delicious in the arms of a good-looking boy.
We had an unwritten rule that if your friend was with a boy when the dance ended, you would make your own way home. Back then nobody was scared to walk the short distance to the hospital on their own. Sometimes a girl would strike it lucky and a boy would offer to take her out for supper. Near the centre of town were any number of bistros, where you could sit at tables with checked coloured tablecloths and eat your meal by candlelight. The candle was stuck in the top of an empty bottle of Mateus Rosé, a popular brand of medium-sweet wine which came from Portugal.
Letitia was the sort of girl who always found herself a date, so it was no great surprise when she met me in the cloakroom, having retrieved her coat and told me she was off out again. What was surprising was the fact that when I caught a glimpse of him, he looked really old.
‘How did you get on?’ I asked the next day at work.
‘You’re not going to believe this,’ she began.
‘Go on,’ I said cautiously.
‘He’s a millionaire.’
‘Oh yeah, and my name is Sandie Shaw,’ I grinned.