I often wonder when I read of the deaths of women, at from forty years of age upward, if, when they should be having the best of their lives, that their early deaths are due to lack of care and rest during the times they are having their babies.
I suffered very much in pregnancy, was violently sick quite a dozen times a day every day for the first six months, with occasional fainting attacks. I was better towards the end, but had bad nights, so had to rest a lot in the day. The baby was born all right, and I got on well, but was weak. When she was twelve months old (I nursed her myself) I had a goitre in my neck, which lasted two years. At one time I was very ill in hospital seven weeks, and away in country six. The doctor said it was weakness following pregnancy that caused it. I was not able to do my home duties, and if I had been a woman who had to go out to work--well, I could not have done so for nearly all the three years. My husband did not want any more children, as I suffered so much with the first. He is eleven years now, and I am very well.
During pregnancy I was fairly well in health, but during my confinements I was very ill. I never had a natural birth.... I think what caused my miscarriages was with having children so quickly, and having to work rather hard at the same time.
_Wife’s allowance 24s.; five children and three miscarriages._
During pregnancy with my first child, after about three months, I started with inflammation of the bladder. I happened to be with my mother at the time, but had it been otherwise I could not have got anyone to look after me, as my husband was only working two and three days a week. Of course, my friends would have looked after me, but everyone is not so fortunate as that. I would have freely died, the pain was so severe. And whatever maternity benefit a wife and mother receives, she gets nothing more than she deserves, and I believe they will get the money as easy as they get the old age pensions, and they will have less to waste.
I very nearly lost my life over my first confinement, through being ignorant of how to take care of myself beforehand. I had lived about eighty miles away from home for some years, and was away from my mother at the time, also too shy and reticent to ever mention my condition to neighbours. I had always been strong and healthy, and never took medicine or aperients in any shape or form, in fact, never thought about it, and acted just the same when pregnant, although dreadfully constipated all the time. I thought it was a result of my condition. At confinement, after twenty-four hours’ pain and suffering I was seized with convulsions just as the baby was at the point of being born, and knew no more for about twelve hours. Another doctor was fetched, and the child was got away somehow, also my friends telegraphed for, as they expected me to die. However, that did not happen. But the doctors said it was the only case of convulsions at confinement that they had ever heard of the patient living after, and they blamed it to the clogged condition of the bowels. I was quite normal over the second confinement. There may perhaps not be much in this, except, perhaps, if I had known a bit more about such things, it would have been a lot better for me. My girl is nineteen now.