How it was in the 1960s!

[oldgrandmama]

Not sure if this will amuse or horrify you ... giving birth in an NHS hospital in the mid 1960s.
First, the ante natal clinic. Held in a bleak prefab, with a shed attached as a waiting room. We sat on long wooden benches, clutching our bottles of urine. No magazines, no heating, no anything - we all sat there cowering and worried. A nurse came in and barked at us to take off all our underwear beneath the waist! So we sheepishly removed our knickers and tights (it was the sixties - tights were just wonderful, we thought.) The two girls (first timers, so didn't know the routine, poor things) who were wearing trousers, were mortified. They struggled out of their knickers and put their trousers back on - only later to be bawled out when they entered the inner sanctum and the doctor harangued them for wasting his valuable time for the few seconds it took to get the trousers off.

Ah yes - the doctor. A heavy handed guy, the first 'internal' I'd had. Didn't even look at me, just a case of rough examination and that was it, I was ordered to attend a couple of natal classes at the hospital where I'd be delivered. No suggestion that future baby's father would be welcome at the classes (he wasn't). Classes were frightening. The Sister in charge of the maternity unit was a very fierce lady, who assured us all we would ALL be given an episiotomy as a matter of course, even showed us the scalpels that'd do the deed, and that we'd probably in induced if we didn't look like delivering between nine and five during the day.

a FATHER present during delivery? Never been heard of those days. Fathers were off and out of it. My son's father was playing golf (we since divorced).

When I went into labour, I was given what we all got - a shave and an enema, then a hot bath. I knew my baby was coming fast but the midwives insisted at as a first child, couldn't be. But it was. My little son was born very soon after I was admitted, after I'd wailed that he WAS COMING and finally someone took me seriously. The delivery? I was given gas and air, that didn't do a thing - just before my son appeared, someone said 'oh, the gas and air cannister was empty, fancy that ...' I got a shot of pethidine and apparently threw a bed pan across the delivery room as I didn't like them constantly shoving it under me when I didn't want it.

I was stitched up after birth, by a doctor who looked like a child, and told I was 'numb' so wouldn't feel the embroidery - NOT TRUE!

Everyone spent a week (and occasionally ten days) in hospital after the birth. We had lessons in bathing babies but not, strangely, about getting to grips with breast feeding. You were pretty well left on your own with that. A girl in a bed near me was crying with pain and said she didn't want to breast feed. So the fearsome sister eventually told her that it'd be made sure that her baby would be kept waiting for a feed, crying with hunger, because of her 'selfishness'.

We were also treated like naughty schoolgirls in the ward - IF you were good, you were allowed one night out, back by 9 p.m., during that time with your husband (no-one would admit to not being married).

We were interrogated about bowel movements and also had to abide by a ritual where we had daily to place the sanitary towels that we used after birth on a shelf, each bit marked with our names, so that sister could check that blood loss was within limits. Seemed humiliating but obviously it was in our best interests.

When, after a week, I returned home with my baby son, I, like I'm sure everyone here, thought to myself 'HELP! What do I DO?' Thankfully, he survived and is now a lawyer in his mid forties.

I've spoken to my mother about this (deliveries in the 1950s)

She didn't think the description of the antenatal clinic was accurate: many/most women didn't go to hospital at all for antenatal care anyhow. She did - it was an ordinary clinic, a little spartan by today's standards but completely in line with the standards of all clinics.

She was frankly disbelieving of the "removing underwear" - there were no internal exams carried out as routine.

She did agree that episiotomy was the norm (but never had knives brandished at her in antenatal classes), as was shaving. Enemas common but nit invariable.

The norm was 14 days in a maternity ward post-natally, with enough nurses to go round to cover all care for babies (if you wanted it) and mothers until they had recovered a bit.

She said she'd never encountered a doctor who behaved like the one in OP, nor had she heard a previous first-hand account of such a one.

She disputes that this was the normal attitude of doctors in maternity care. Though agrees that you can find examples of substandard doctors in as many decades as there have been doctors.

My aunt lost 2 babies, one at 3 days old and one at 3 months old after an operation. She wasn't allowed to see the 3 day old baby at all, he was taken off to an incubator straight after birth. Her husband and my mother were allowed to see him but were told not to let my aunt see him at all as she would take the loss much easier if she had never seen him.

So she never did. No one has a photo of him, my uncle is now gone and so the only person who remembers what he looked like is my mother. This was late 60's, 2 or 3 years before I was born. I could cry every time I think of that story.

scarevola, I can assure you and your mum that every word of my first experience of pregnancy and childbirth is true. Other maternity units may well have been pleasanter - others may have been even more disciplined and rigid than the one I was in. As for 'heavy handed' male doctors, unfortunately it was a given among young women of my age group that many gynaecologists and obstetricians (male, usually) were not the gentlest of souls!

On the plus side of hospitals such as the one I was in, a stay there may not have been exactly a wonderful experience, but the strict regime and the absolute authority of matron and the fierce ward sister ensured absolute cleanliness - you could probably have eaten lunch off the sparkling ward floor (around 24 beds in the ward, in two long rows, like a very austere boarding school dorm), and awful infections like MRSA were virtually unknown. The close attention paid to our bowels and post partum bleeding was all for our own sakes. We were expected to finish our meals ('new mothers need nourishment' we were sternly told) and it was noted and commented on if any woman wasn't eating properly.

Not saying things are better or worse these days. My daughter and beloved daughter in law have, between them, had five babies within the last eight yers in NHS hospitals and were totally happy with their experiences. One also reads horror stories about appalling maternity care resulting in trauma, tragedy.

Enjoying reading this! Really interesting.

I'm sorry, oldgrandma! I didn't mean to suggest at all that the experience wasn't true.

And you do seem to agree that anecdotes aren't necessarily representative of the general standard of care or attitude.

My Granny gave birth around 1960 in Canada and the women were tied to the bed by their hands and feet as a matter of course during labour.

The management of pregnancy and childbirth has changed a lot over the last half-century. Back in the '40s and perhaps into the 50s, homebirths were the norm and no woman would be admitted to hospital unless there were problems. All the care was done by the GP and community midwife.

I don't know when things changed, but by the 70s hospital births were the norm ? homebirths were almost unheard of. In my first pregnancy, care was shared between hospital and GP/midwife, so I had several visits to the hospital ante-natal clinics which were overcrowded and chaotic. I picked up from other, more knowledgeable women, that at that time the Medical Defence Union took the view that once a woman had stepped over the threshold of the maternity unit/hospital she had given implicit consent to all and any treatment, so we were neither told what drugs were administered nor asked for consent. I think that attitude had a major effect on attitudes towards women both by the medical profession and some of the nursing staff. The consultant I had with my first (in 1976) didn't just require us to be sans knickers, but sans just about everything else ? just a dressing gown and shoes ? and we had to remove the dressing gown before getting onto the examination table. Apparently he thought that would eliminate any sense of embarrassment when we eventually got the labour room.

The post-natal ward where first-timers stayed for ten days was a bit like Cell Block H. We were allowed to have our babies with us ? I was told by a midwife that that was because there had been a fire in another maternity unit elsewhere some while before and panicking mothers who were trying to get to their babies in the nursery had delayed evacuation (not really what I wanted to hear). Babies, when not being fed, bathed, or having their nappy changed, were supposed to be asleep. Any baby crying at any other time was removed to the nursery. One particular dragon would even remove a crying baby from its mother's arms.

It was dehumanising and regimented back then. Things do seem to have improved quite a lot since then, but from reading threads here there still seems a way to go.

Thanks oldgrandma - really interesting.

And you could smoke in bed on the maternity ward

My grandmas had very different experiences. My maternal grandmother gave birth at home three times in the late 50s and early 60s and was cared for by the nuns/community midwives and was very pleased with her care, though she did have two late miscarriages for which she was hospitalised and to this day won't talk about it (the miscarriages terrible enough but the care left her traumatised).

My paternal grandmother had my aunt in 1950. She was in labour for a week, sobbing, crying, begging for help. She was repeatedly sent home, given drugs to 'calm her down' (please read, knock her out), examined in humiliating ways and finally had some horrific intervention when they pulled out my aunt, very bloody, injured and blue. She is profoundly deaf, brain damaged and requires full time care. My grandma accidentally fell pregnant again 8yrs later and had my Dad. At home, with the nuns and community midwives.

Ah yes - smoking. I don't recall in the sixties any advice about giving up the weed while pregnant (I didn't smoke, in any case) and while smoking didn't happen in the maternity ward, there was a small room attached, with a few chairs and a television set, called 'the lounge' where smoking was permitted. The nurses had their own smoking room!

No-one banged on about the dangers of alcohol, either - or dosing oneself with over the counter drugs while pregnant. I remember many 'dinner dances' (husband to be was a big noise in Rotary, the golf club) I glugged down wine with the best of them. current thinking seems to veer between absolutely no booze, or on the other hand, the odd glass won't hurt a pregnant lady. Were I to be pregnant these days (unlikely - I'm almost seventy and underwent a radical hysterectomy and oopherectomy a few years back) I don't think I'd risk it. But then again, if I were shown the shiny sharp scalpel of the sort that was going to slice my tender parts in a compulsory episiotomy, I might have reached for the Chardonnay to calm me down!

My mum had two home births in the 1960s, both sounded relaxed and straightforward with an elderly local midwife. Afterwards she had a home help for two weeks to make meals, clean the house and help with other children. There were also daily midwife visits for the same length of time. A bit different to the help you get after a home birth nowadays.

Really interesting to read your account, oldgrandmama.

My experience of DD's birth in the early seventies was much the same. I had to basically surrender myself to the medical staff and accept what they did to me.

Pain relief was only given when I begged for it and I was put on a drip 'to hurry things up' - I had only been in labour for a couple of hours!

When my baby was born, she was bathed and dressed before I got to hold her, I nearly broke my heart crying and kept asking for her.

Breastfeeding was unfashionable and in a ward of 16 mums, there were only two of us attempting it. We had to draw the curtains around our beds to preserve our modesty (!) and we had to give our babies a supplementary bottle of formula after each feed in case they were still hungry. They were taken to the nursery at night and given a bottle if they woke. No wonder I didn't have much success with BF.

I was terrified when I had to bath my baby in the hospital's big stone sinks - I was so scared I would drop her - and we had to do it every day. I was supposed to stay in hospital for a week but discharged myself after 5 days as I was desperate to go home.

I did like the fact the visiting times were limited to an hour twice a week (husbands got to visit in the evenings). We had to do our post-natal exercises and were made to have a sleep after lunch. All the babies were fed by the clock and if they cried between feeds they were taken to the nursery.

My second and third babies were born in the 80s and my experiences then couldn't have been more different.

Ashtrays at each bedside down here.
(I know)

Sounds pretty much like stories my mother and aunts have told me. Pretty much 99% of midwives in the 60s were childless as they were expected to give up their job when they had their first child. Also they were forced to go on maternity leave about 6/8 weeks before the baby was due. Those who carried on and became sisters etc, were usually unmarried and lived in homes attached to the hospital. This was one of the main reasons why there was a low uptake of breastfeeding in that time. It's not exactly easy for some and no one there actually had any experience of doing it themselves. They treated bf and ff babies the same, i.e. with the same 4 hour feeding routine.

Oh yes, noviceoftheday, when I was in the maternity unit, we were told to breastfeed, but no help, not even showing how to get the baby to latch on , and if you couldn't get it right, tough ... I tried and tried, my nipples were in a terrible state and my tiny son seemed to hate the whole process. Poor little chap was sucking up more blood than breast milk and probably underfed for the week I was in the unit. When I got out, I'm afraid I put him straight on the bottle. Sorry if that makes me sound like A Bad Mummy but - with no-one to put me on the right track (and don't say GP - he was a ghastly man and the Health Visitor - mmm, no comment) I just gave up.

Smoking was permitted when I was in - in the day room, which was part seating area and part dining area. So all the non-smokers had to endure a smoky atmosphere when eating their food.

There was one midwife who seemed to be the breastfeeding support person, who did do her best to get my DD latched on and feeding. But no-one seemed to have equated the fact that I was still groggy for about 24 hours after the birth and my DD's non-responsiveness. When I eventually agreed to DD being bottle-fed, because she was losing more and more weight, one of the other midwives gave her a bottle and almost accusingly said that she wasn't even trying to suck, just letting the milk trickle down her throat. It didn't seem to occur to anyone (let alone me) that the drugs I was given (allegedly pethidine, morphine and chloral) might have crossed the placenta.

My GP wasn't very helpful either. When I explained the reasons why I was bottle-feeding, he said that the reason why breastfeeding was recommended was because it prevented women from getting breast cancer.

There's lots more I could write. This topic isn't really awakening memories, they've been lurking in the background all this time. I wonder how useful this topic is for "oldies" here because we didn't have the birth debriefing option back then, or whether it's interesting for the younger generation to see how things have changed/not changed.

Actually huggly I find Mumsnet has kind of 'debriefed' me!

Reading BF advice on here has helped me realise where I went wrong (I finally succeeded third time round by muddling through). And I've learned such a lot reading about other women's birth experiences.

I feel kind of bitter that I was never instructed in the proper use of G&A for example. It just didn't help me and I think that was mostly because I didn't use it effectively. Although I attended ante-natal classes and read some books on the subject, I wasn't told the useful things!

I was traumatised after my first birth but I now know I had a very 'easy' straightforward experience - I wish I could have enjoyed it a bit more.

I joined here thinking I might be able to offer advice and instead I have learned so much from you.

A big to all of you who have helped me come to terms with my experiences.

oldgrandmama, when you say When I got out, I'm afraid I put him straight on the bottle. according to many members of my family who were midwives and other healthcare professionals in the 60s, that this was the norm because there was just no support at all in the hospital. Does NOT make you or anyone else a Bad Mummy. Even in these days, the bf advice is very poor and I really struggled first time round as no one in the hospital put me on the right track. Probably the big difference these days is that there is more willing/encouragement and the things that work against breastfeeding are mostly removed in comparison to the 60s.

1944girl, it's funny but I am only in my 30s but grew up hearing the stories from my mum and aunts both from the professional side and from their own experiences. I could help you write that book . When midwives moved from the resedential course update every 5 years to having to do courses with regular essays, I remember typing up an essay on episiotomies for one of my rellies and thinking OMG.....if ever something could cut teen pregnancy rates, making them type up that essay would be a surefire winner!

Haha novice, was there anything in that essay about waiting till the woman is pleading for drugs before you fetch the G&A cannister (which is propping the door open) and give it to her?

I could see it but I couldn't reach it

Noviceoftheday - that's what I was going to say to Oldgrandma. Although 'put him straight on the bottle' did make me giggle. Don't know if it's a regional thing, but where I grew up 'straight on the bottle' means something with a definite alcoholic content. Now that would be Bad Mummy.

my gran gave birth in the early 50's, and was given a c/s in early labour (reason unclear)

i don't know what the care was like. My mum had me in the late 70's..and yes, she was told to go home, she wasn't in labour...and then a few minutes later as I crowned, they tried to take her to be induced (they had the wrong notes) - she had her next two at home, the system was they'd send out a MW to examine and advise you to come in or not...she told the MW she wasn't coming in, would they please deliver her baby...

they still had 9am clinics in the 80s (that is, all mothers are given a 9am appointment, they work through them in the course of the morning, meaning some waited over 5 hours...some with other children)

during appointments for Dbro2 a doctor and MW had a conversation over her head about the fact it would be very likely DBro2 would be deformed. He wasn't.

i have met two other women who gave birth recently who were told they weren't in labour and delivered shortly afterwards.....

todays accepted practices will be looked back on in horror too.

during appointments for Dbro2 a doctor and MW had a conversation over her head about the fact it would be very likely DBro2 would be deformed. He wasn't. When I read about some of the horror experiences that people have, I think you're right when you say that today's accepted practices will be looked back in horror in 40 years time.

secondtimelucky, you clearly don't have family who claim a dab of something strong always helped the baby sleep! (my poor friend had to deal with this sage advice when she had kids!)

also at your experience horMOANSnomore!