030 - What Was Birth Like in the 1950s? (with Dolores Cunningham)

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I’m not sure I could have been more excited or more honored to have had the pleasure of interviewing my grandmother, my Granny, about her birth stories. What was it like to give birth in the 1950’s and 60’s in West Virginia? Today you’ll get to find out. Along with some other fun stories about her and my Grandpa’s relationship and past! This just might be my favorite episode yet. Ok, it will probably always be my favorite episode!

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TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Surrendered Birth Stories.

Birth Stories, Birth Education, and the Pursuit of Surrendering It All to God.

Let's get started.

Hey, everybody.

I hope you have had a great week.

If you live in North Carolina or at least in Central North Carolina, you've had a beautiful week this past week.

We've been in the 70s all week.

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And this week, they were still sick, but we're finally healing up.

We're down to one last sick kid, and I'm pretty sure today is his last day being sick.

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Now, I'm not sure I could have been more excited or more honored to have had the pleasure of interviewing my grandmother, my granny, about her birth stories.

So what was it like to give birth in the 1950s and 1960s in West Virginia?

Today, you'll get to find out, along with some other fun stories about her and my grandpa's relationship and just the past.

This just might be my favorite episode yet.

Okay, it probably will always be my favorite episode.

But if you're anything like me, I have grown to love hearing multi-generational stories and being able to pass these on to my children and then hopefully one day my grandchildren.

So this episode will always hold such a special place in my heart.

I don't think I've been more excited to record a podcast episode.

But welcome to another episode of Surrendered Birth Stories.

I am your host, Kayla Heater.

And my guest today is none other than my granny, Dolores Cunningham, the one and only.

Wow, that's a buildup.

So, granny, I would love if you could tell us a little bit about yourself.

Now, you have a lot more history than maybe some of us, which is wonderful, and part of what we're going to hear today.

Let's start off with how old you are, because in my book, that means how wise and experienced you are.

And a little bit about your marriage, and how long you've been married, and maybe how many kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, the stats, where you live, that kind of stuff.

Ooh, that's a lot of history.

Well, first of all, I'm adopted.

My mother and dad went through quite a bit to get me into the home, and they were successful doing it three times.

I had a brother and a sister, and eight years between the sister and I, and then forever between the brother and I, I don't know, 12, 14 years.

But you were all adopted.

We were all three adopted separately in different situations.

I had the privilege of being there.

My mother was hosting the church women's group for Christmas, and she gets a call that there's a baby boy if she wants one.

Now, he wasn't near the struggle the girls were, but we got him when he was two days old.

It was quite exciting from my point of view, because I was about in probably fifth grade.

Yeah.

Somewhere along in there.

So I was totally excited, and I had to go to school the next day, and they went and picked him up, and it snowed, because it was Christmas a week before.

He was born the 12th of December.

So anyway, they went and picked him up.

I sat on the porch waiting for him to get home.

I was so excited.

And then we went on as a family.

So you were like a little mama.

Yeah.

It was quite fun.

He was put in a cradle that my great granddad had made, and I tried to put all the grandkids and we, with the greats, we ended up taking pictures of them in the cradle.

But the grandkids slept in it, would take a nap in it.

So it was your great-

My great-

Grandfather's cradle.

He lived in Jamestown, New York.

And then that's the one that all of our kids still take pictures in?

Yes.

Wow.

The one that's upstairs in the bedroom, I think where you usually sleep.

Yep, that's where I usually sleep when I come.

So that's kind of how I got started.

Graduated high school, but before I did that, I met a guy named Jerry.

And you have to tell the story of how you met this guy, because you told me a little bit about how you met grandfather the other day, and I was laughing.

Well, this was in what, the 53, 54 time period, and things were a little different than now.

But we were, I don't know if it was eighth, no, it had to be ninth grade.

Party, birthday party.

And it was right down below my house, so it was close, in the neighborhood.

And somehow, spin the bottle, got to be part of this program.

Oh, you teenagers in the 1950s, playing spin the bottle.

So, I was embarrassed, because he was a country boy, and he had never come to a city party before, and his mom and dad were sitting outside, waiting to pick him up to take him home.

And of course, the lights went out, in the room where they were spinning the bottle.

And I remember going home, telling my mother and dad that his parents were just going to think we were awful kids, you know, because of that.

I don't guess they thought it was too bad, because we still ended up getting married.

But we really didn't know each other till that point.

We had been in the freshman year again, at the end of the school year, and this was probably just prior to or post that.

For the class party at the end of the year, they put your name in a hat, and they drew out two names.

They had the boys in one, the girls in the other.

They drew out two names for the king and queen of the class for the year ending, all that.

And whose name did they pull out?

Mine, Dolores, and Jerry.

And we didn't really know each other.

And I didn't even remember that that was how it happened until I was looking at my scrapbook that I always kept.

And I'd saved the ribbons.

They gave us a box of candy, I think it was.

And here it said on it details of who the king and queen were.

And by that time, I was dating him.

So we had group square dancing, and we joined him into the group, and we had dinners once a month.

So he started attending the dinners.

And one thing led to another, till my senior year at the all club dance, I got a ring.

He proposed at the dance?

He proposed at the dance in the middle of the dance floor.

And that was both of your senior years of high school.

I'm two days older than him.

Two days wiser than him.

Wiser, yeah.

Although grandpa is a very wise man.

Makes you all the wiser.

Very dedicated, very knowledgeable.

I'm not one bit afraid to follow his lead, although I do run my mouth once in a while.

Not you.

All right.

So high school sweethearts.

We just graduated high school, and you got married the end of the summer, right?

Well, we graduated in May.

He immediately went to the military.

He wanted off the farm.

He worked day to night.

The farmers do that.

That's how they survive.

His parents had bought a tractor, and he plowed and disked and whatever all those tractors do for neighbors all around.

That's how he got his spending money.

He had to give whatever he got, he had to give a dollar of it to his parents, a dollar to upkeep on the tractor, and he got the rest.

So he went straight to the military?

He was tired of the farm life, and he went straight to the military.

He went on a different adventure.

And then you, I guess, planned a wedding that summer?

Yeah, he was in basic training in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

No, no, no.

Where was, because we went to Fort Belvoir.

That was his first station and where we went together.

Oh, wherever.

Anyways, he got trained.

And so we planned the wedding for September in...

And this was 19...

This was 57.

57.

And so you got married in September?

September 14, 1957.

Two 18-year-olds hanging out.

Well, 18 and a half.

18 and a half.

All right.

Just like now, it's not 84 anymore.

We've passed over the half, so we are considered 85.

So now you're 85-year-olds.

You got to push it to stay young.

You got to push it to be older.

So then how long were you married then when you found out?

Well, we went to Texas.

I went on a bus by myself to El Paso, Texas.

Keep in mind, I had never been on a bus from Mannington to Fairmont, which is, what, 15 miles, never ridden a bus, really.

I had done some with my grandmother when I was younger and all, but never a trip like that.

And the bus drivers were so sweet.

They realized I was young and dumb and needed all the help I could get.

And they made sure when I had to switch buses out in the middle of the desert that they didn't leave me stranded.

It was an okay trip, but...

So grandpa was already in Texas and you were meeting him there.

He was in El Paso.

What is that fort?

Whatever.

No, Belvores, Virginia.

Whatever.

And I get to the bus station in El Paso, which is Indian country, and I'm talking real Indians, the Serapis, the whole thing.

And I don't see anybody that...

I don't even think there was any women, but nobody that looked like me, this 18-year-old thing from Marion County, West Virginia.

Turns out they ended up giving me a message that he was going to have to be a little bit late.

And so I had to sit in the bus station and wait.

Well, we had no car.

This was, you know, trying to get close enough to the base, and he was borrowing a car to come and get me and all, whatever, finally.

And you're moving there.

This isn't like you're visiting him.

Like, this is the move, isn't it?

Yeah, it was a move in that we rented this two-room house that was part of a trailer court, and the bathroom was outside.

Not like you're thinking a stop, but it was attached to the building, and to take a shower or go to the bathroom, you had to go out around the building.

Yeah.

But it's El Paso, so it didn't get too cold.

Although it snowed while we were there.

Really?

Yes.

One little kid was getting groceries, and I was in the, well, I was getting groceries, and he came off the school bus.

He came in, I'm going to use your phone.

He yelled to the guy behind the counter, and he gets on there, and I hear him say, Mama, Mama, look outside.

It's snowing.

So, yeah, snowed in El Paso, Texas.

We weren't there terribly long, and then he was sent to Korea.

So he went off to Korea, were you...

We drove home from Texas, which took probably three days.

And he had leave time enough, and then we took him to Pittsburgh.

He flew to Washington state and caught a ship and rode a ship.

And they're not cell phones like today.

No communication except...

He's just leaving for war, and you're back at home.

Right.

And I'm back home.

And we had wanted a baby so bad to kind of have a coming home party, I guess.

I can't remember exactly, but it was something that we wanted.

And didn't know whether it would happen or not.

And he had left and didn't know, but turned out I was pregnant.

So he left before you guys found out you were pregnant.

So did he know?

Did you end up telling him how?

Again, no communication.

We wrote letters.

That was how you...

So it took a week, you know, to get the information, but he got it.

And you're familiar with a buggy that we have, that we've also done pictures in.

You all robed in that buggy when you were little.

He had it sent to me when he found out I was pregnant.

And it's called a Headstrom, which was a company.

I don't know if it's still in existence, but that's kind of buggy.

It was very fancy.

It was kind of like ones you saw maids pushing babies in.

It had springs and set up kind of high.

Yeah.

So that I had.

And then the oldest one, Kathy, was born in 1959.

Your first.

And he saw her.

She was January 1959, and he got home a little early, which was April, I want to say.

I don't think it was May.

I think it was April because he was due to get out in June.

But anyway, he came early.

Red Cross was how we got information to him.

And he tells the story better than me of how that went on that end, of how his company commander or something, they're in Korea, so they're pretty tight.

And they presented him with a certificate and a little pair of Korean baby shoes.

As for becoming— Of getting word that he became a dad.

Became a dad, so— So she was like four months old when she met— Yeah, so she was pretty good size when he got home and became a father, and we immediately moved to Kentucky, where she was at—maybe that was Fort Belvoir, Kentucky.

We'll figure it out by the end of this podcast.

Sometimes I know, but anyway, we lived down there a year, and he became Catholic while we were there and took his instructions.

He had done a lot in Korea.

He wanted to do it where he was alone with God and private in his mind's eye.

He didn't want influence from anybody except, you know, and turned out where we rented the apartment, the people were Catholic, and the man stood for him when he was confirmed.

So that was how he, you know, has stayed with the faith.

And I have to tell you, yesterday, it was him that got me up and got me to church.

I was like, it was pretty cold and blah, blah, blah.

Come on, we're going.

Sounds like grandpa.

Come on, come on, Dolores.

So, do we need the second baby?

Well, do you want to tell us any details about that first birth?

What does a birth look like in 1959?

In what state were you in?

We were in Fairmont.

It was a Saturday, January 24th.

Right, because that's her birthday.

Did you know you were going into labor?

Not exactly.

I woke up that morning, and dad had gone to work, where I'd been up with him while he was doing.

Mother was still in bed, and it was cold.

So you were staying at your parents' house since he was off.

Yes, I stayed in Mannington, until he got home, we went to Kentucky.

But anyway, as I recall, I crawled in bed with her, and I said, Gosh, my back's hurting.

Can you get it warm?

And so she snuggled up and got my back warm.

Well, that was the beginning of labor.

I just didn't know what was going on.

I think we ended up going to Fairmont, which is about 13, 15 miles.

And labor wasn't too terribly long, because she was born by 1.30 in the afternoon.

Wow, and for her first baby.

For her first baby.

And I had the local doctor, the town doctor we all knew, Dr.

Fry.

And it just wasn't a bad labor.

So you went to the hospital.

Yes.

And did your mom get to stay with you?

No, no, no, no.

Okay, so what was it like in the hospital?

You come in to the hospital.

They check you in.

You wait downstairs.

We'll call you.

We'll let you know.

And dad did not come.

It was just mother.

So they whisked me off.

And well, they prepped you.

They took all your vitals and did all that.

And then I never heard of an epidural, but they gave you some kind of a shot that helped you, relaxed you, was what they said.

We'll give you a shot, and it'll just relax all your muscles.

You know, relax everything.

We'll get this thing going.

I'm going to have to do some research and figure out what that shot was.

I have no idea.

I mean, I read a book about the history of birth once, and it might be in there.

But yeah, I'd be curious to know in 1959 what that shot was.

Relaxing.

Do you remember being relaxed?

Maybe I was, you know, because I had no idea what labor really would be like.

Yeah.

And, you know, I've watched the girls now and know all about pushing, and I don't remember any of that.

Yeah, you don't remember knowing that ahead of time?

Well, I guess because your mom never gave birth.

No.

So she wouldn't have had any idea.

And I do not remember them letting her back where I was.

Yeah.

Were you by yourself, or were you with other laboring women?

Well, it was a labor room.

There were several.

Several laboring women in there.

Were you in a bed, or were you like up walking around?

No, I was in a bed.

Once you got in, you didn't...

They wouldn't let you out?

They wouldn't let you out.

And later on, I remember going to the bathroom with Jeff.

In the beginning, I don't remember that happening at all.

I just remember, it was about 2.30 in the afternoon, and the reason I can remember that is because when the second one came along, it was identical.

The birth?

And I think it was an hour's difference.

Oh, yeah, because you said 1.30 and then 2.30.

Bad labor, you know, and went through and was born in the afternoon.

The tricky part about that, Jerry was, of course, back in civilian life, and he's so full of brush, brush, door to door.

And that was his first, it was December 5th.

November 5th.

This is my dad she's talking about.

This is my dad.

And November 5th.

But it was a Saturday.

The labor was identical.

I always told it that way.

So it must have been just the same.

One was born at 1.30, one was born at 2.30.

You know, the first two.

And then that was it.

That was that.

He, the funny thing about him, we brought him home with his nose had a blister on it.

It turns out they had pillowcases for the crib sheets, the little bassinets or beds, and turned out that the laundry, some said starch, which I don't know if that really or was it detergent, but something anyway, he rubbed his nose.

And it irritated?

And it irritated his nose.

We brought him home with a big scar on his nose.

And birth weight is a little bit interesting too.

The first one weighed eight, nine.

Okay, nice job.

Your dad weighed eight pounds.

Right on the button.

Right on the dot.

And were they both around their due dates?

Yes, as near as I can remember.

It was, you know.

Close to it.

Close to it.

But I don't remember any long or quick rush.

Yeah.

And they were less than two years apart, because she was born January of 59, and he was born November of 1960.

So they were almost two years, if you'd have pushed him a little bit.

But then, 17 months later, somehow we didn't know how to stop this.

You just kept having babies.

Having babies.

Wait, were you nursing?

No.

That's another thing that back in those days, they laid both of them to the breast.

And when they didn't take to it, oh well.

Oh well.

You've got inverted nipples.

Did you have inverted nipples?

Well, they said I did.

Now, to this day, I don't believe that.

I think there wasn't any effort involved to...

To actually learn how to nurse.

It wasn't cool to breastfeed back in the 1950s and 60s.

No.

So anyway...

So straight to the bottle?

Start right off the bat with formula.

Well, it's amazing that your babies were as far apart as they were then.

Without nursing.

If that...

They always say what?

You can't get pregnant when you...

Well, I think you can.

You totally can.

But that was what was said at the time.

Okay.

So then you have...

So now you've got two who are under two, and then you're pregnant with...

17 months later, Michelle came along.

Michelle.

My Aunt Shelley.

Her birth was a little different, yes?

Yes.

It was a lot different.

Let's hear about Shelley's birth.

I was in Mannington, and they were going to have a baby shower for me, because two kids, you know, you don't have anything left.

And my sister was old enough, and she and a classmate wanted to do a baby shower.

So I went up, and we were two little kids running around, but we were having a baby shower.

And I went up to take my shower, and came back down, and Mother said, would you like a cup of tea?

And I said, sure.

So I sat down.

And when I stood up, everything was wet.

And I said, did you spill this tea on the chair?

Well, I don't think I did.

And so I went up, changed my clothes, and thought I'd sat in tea.

Came back down, fresh clothes, sat down, sat down, same thing.

Did you spill more tea?

Well, now we knew that...

Neither one of us.

Keep in mind, she'd never had a child.

Right.

I had never had one that's water broke before you went to the hospital.

Right.

Those third babies, hey...

That was in the afternoon.

That's what my third baby did.

Really?

Yeah, my water broke first with Jensen.

There you go.

Maybe I got that from you.

I was going to say, can you inherit that?

I don't think so.

Well, so she got scared, and we said, well, we need to get in Fairmont.

We need to get there.

Nothing was happening.

I didn't feel any pressure or nothing.

So we did.

We went to Fairmont.

After having experienced the first two, of them making me captive and stay in bed and wouldn't let me go, I was reluctant to go to the hospital.

Yeah.

It was early evening, I think four or five o'clock, and mother says, you're going.

Were you having contractions?

I really was having mild...

Mild ones.

Mild contractions.

But, you know, I'd given two births that were pretty easy.

I mean, quick, you know, so this wasn't anything that set any alarms off.

But she was, you're going, you need to be in the hospital.

So we went, it's like five minutes away.

I had to lay a lot after I got home that day.

So I wasn't active enough to stir things up.

Right.

So, oh, yeah, part of this story, I changed doctors.

At first, too, I had Dr.

Fry, who was like the horse and buggy doctor.

Everybody went to him for everything.

So I decided I'd be big girl.

And I picked a doctor in Fairmont, went to him.

Or just a regular...

No, he was just a regular doctor.

anyway, the hospital did call him and tell him that I was there.

But it was probably six, seven o'clock in the evening, I guess they prepped and determined that I was in labor and my water had broke.

He never came.

He never came.

My other doctor would have been right there.

But anyway, he never came.

So, turns out it was a long night.

There were a lot of student nurses, and I happened to know the lady.

She was a friend of the family, who was the head nurse in charge of these students.

Well, I'm telling you, they must examine me every hour.

It was really miserable.

Yeah.

And I think it was long about two in the morning.

A group came in.

now Jerry and Mother were somewhere out there in the hospital waiting, you know.

I'm sure asking questions, but I never saw them.

So, in one of these episodes, somewhere around two in the morning, I guess it was, she came in, and they examined me, and she said, let me see, let me do this, you know, the head teacher.

The head nurse.

She said, oh, she's ready.

She's ready.

Let's go, you know, we'll get delivery ready.

And they take you to a different room for that, right?

Yes.

And they take you down, and the doctor supposedly is in the room.

Only mine never showed up.

There was a baby doctor, you know, it was, there was two of them in the room, and I was like, oh, my god, I'm in the same town, and the one was in the same building where I worked.

No, I didn't work there yet.

He later was.

But everybody knew Dr.

Court.

he'd just delivered a baby.

And the nurses are shoving me down the hall, and grandpa says it was like Ben Casey, which was a TV show about a doctor, and they opened it with the operating doors flying open, and the bed being pushed through.

Well, that's how they did with me.

Anyway, they were pushing me through the door, and actually, grandpa got the head of the bed, and they shoved him and shoved me.

And so he saw you.

Yeah.

And mother's scared to death.

She thinks something's badly wrong.

She has no idea.

It's just a birth.

I went into the delivery room.

Dr.

Court is coming out.

And the nurse says, Dr.

Court, we need you back in there.

he came back in, delivered Shelley.

And also with her, everybody said, oh, you have a boy and you have a girl.

What do you want?

I said, a tiny baby.

They had been eight, eight, nine.

And all I wanted was something small.

It turned out she weighed six pounds, 12 ounces, I think it was.

So, you know, God handled me what I had asked for.

So, when the regular doctor came in, Dr.

Cort says to him, his name was Bressler, and they called him Breth.

Doc, Breth, I got you a baby girl.

And then that was kind of when I got to my rooms, the other thing was her that was just really, back in the day, air conditioning wasn't a thing.

It wasn't a thing.

They opened the hospital windows.

I could hear the birds singing, because it was June, the last of June, the birds were, it was just like heaven.

It was just so peaceful.

My long night was over.

Everything, I could rest, you know.

It was finished.

And the birds made it happen.

Did they give you that relaxing shot that time?

No, I don't remember anything.

Now, as the course of the evening went on, it might have done, but my focus at that point was these students.

Yeah, they were coming in and crying every hour.

They were learning, you know.

I never did learn if one of them ever delivered babies.

I don't know.

So, then, 17 months later, seemed to be a thing.

You're on a little schedule.

Number four.

So, he was born January 8th, which is today.

Today.

So, happy birthday, Uncle Jeff.

You are 60 years old.

And that's been a funny thing, too.

People say, how do you feel about your kids getting older?

Never bothered me.

I never felt any older.

I always said it was their fault.

They had to deal with it.

But I will say, having the youngest turn 60 is a little bit different.

It's a little deeper.

A little bit deeper.

It's still good.

So you were what, 25 when you had?

I was 20.

Well, just really 20 years between Kate and I.

I mean, hers is January, mine's in May.

I would have been 21.

With her.

Yeah.

His is quite different.

Jeff's story?

Yes.

I apparently all along give birth very easy.

Apparently.

So that was that.

Well, I went back to the original doctor.

Yes.

Not to the no-show doctor.

Yeah, not to the no-show guy.

His daughter had delivered her baby earlier in the day.

Grandpa had gone to a basketball game, and my water broke.

Oh, again.

Again.

So he gets home.

I'm having absolutely no pain.

No contraction.

He had called to see how I was, and I said, I'm fine, but my water broke.

Yeah.

And so he came home.

Still no pain.

No contractions.

Didn't feel a thing.

At this point, you have a one, two, and three-year-old.

Yeah.

And of course, mother was involved only staying home.

She took care of him.

So he said, we're going.

We're not going to fool around.

Well, in fact, I had called the doctor, and the doctor reminded me, Dolores, this is number four.

You know, I don't care if you're not in any pain.

You're not having contractions.

I don't even know if they use the word contraction.

Pain.

He said, really, I'd feel better if you were here with me.

So I did when I think about 8 o'clock in the evening, between 7 and 8.

And I remember having a hard contraction when I got in the car.

And I took my breath and all.

And again, we're not five minutes from the hospital.

So get there, get upstairs, and I'm walking.

Walk in.

You're fine.

Fine.

No wheelchairs.

Nothing like that.

I guess we took an elevator, because I think it was up.

the doctor's daughter was, I asked what room she was in.

And we were passing it.

So I went in, was talking with her, chit-chatting about her baby and how things were going.

And she said, you're not having any pain?

And I said, no, I'm not having.

But the water broke, and I had one when we got the car.

And I had that one contraction in the car.

And the nurses twice came back and looked in the room.

And finally, the third time, the nurse said, Dolores, come on.

That seems to be a theme in your life.

So I said, well, I'll see you later or in the morning, whatever, because she was going to go home the next day.

So anyway, I went back.

They gave me an enema.

I don't remember it in the others.

But you remember it in that one?

Yeah, because I don't remember getting out of bed with the first two, and the third room was all about these students.

Checking you all night.

With the exams all night.

That was something they did back then.

They did routinely give enemas when you were in labor.

Well, this time they did, and they let me go to the bathroom, which was right beside the bed.

Well, how nice, since they gave you an enema.

I immediately went all over the wall.

Well, an enema will do that to you.

So I'm in there cleaning the wall.

And the nurse comes in.

She said, what on earth are you doing?

What's taking so long?

What on earth are you doing?

And I said, well, I made a mess.

She said, that's our job.

Get in bed.

We'll clean it up.

So I did.

My original doctor came in.

He looked at me and I he said, give her a shot.

I'll just relax.

I said, but I'm not having any pain.

I don't need to be relaxed.

He said, give her a shot.

Of course he did.

He examined me right there.

He said, oh, she's seven.

I can stretch her to eight.

Go get delivery ready.

So did they give you the shot?

I guess they did because they're wheeling me down the hall and I'm complaining about the wheel on the bed squeaking.

And that they need to oil it.

And you still weren't having any pain?

No pain.

Well, but now they've given you the shot, so we don't really know.

Yeah, but never ever.

But you were like conscious.

You remember it.

Oh, yeah.

It wasn't that kind of shot that knocked you out.

Nothing like that.

Where do they give you the shot?

Is it like in your butt?

I think it was in the leg.

Because it wasn't the arm.

I don't remember.

Probably something lower.

There's more muscle mass or something.

Huh.

I never thought about that.

I'm going to research this when we're done and let you know what shot you got.

Well, it's something to relax you.

And I said, but I don't I'm not having any pain anyways that will relax you.

I said, oh well.

I was complaining about the wheel.

I don't think I was too uptight.

It wasn't long.

I don't really remember you know, like you all say, push.

And I've seen on TV, they push.

He just kind of came out?

He just came out.

And there he was.

And of course, we didn't know the sex.

And the other cute story with all this, I always picked the right outfit to bring him home in.

the boys, I had a boys outfit.

And I never thought to take two.

You just only ever took one?

Now, I never asked God for one or the other.

You know, never had a preference.

Yeah.

But I guess by the time I had girl, boy, girl, I wanted a boy.

Who knows?

And that's what you got.

That's what we got.

Girl, boy, girl, boy.

Two and two.

So, I'm curious, in the hospital back then, once the baby was out of you, did they hand you the baby?

I don't ever remember him laying it on me.

Now, surely they would have.

I don't know.

I really don't know back then if they would have.

I wish I could be clearer on that, because I remember...

It was 60 plus years ago.

Now, keep in mind, they didn't leave him in the room with us.

Right.

That's what I'm saying.

Like, they took him to a nursery.

We fed him, and nobody was allowed in the room when they were in there.

You know, that was a separate time.

Like, Jerry wasn't in there.

They could go to the nursery and look in the window, and they'd hold the baby up.

We had a friend that did that.

That was her job.

She went in to hold the babies up.

This is your baby.

Through the glass.

Bring them up, and the glass was between you and the baby.

And until you went home, the father never touched them.

Until you went home?

Wow.

So they brought them to you to feed them.

And that was it.

But when you fed them, you were feeding them a bottle.

Yeah.

And then they would take them away?

So you didn't even get to take a nap with them?

We never changed the diaper.

Wow.

Nothing.

Never dressed them until it was time to go home.

How did they expect you to get used to it?

Oh, I mean, it was your fourth, but when it's your first, how do they expect you to get used to it if you only have them when they're needing to be fed?

It was a different time.

Well, we didn't go back.

What do you all do?

24 hours or something, you go back to check.

Of course, that's to see if breastfeeding's working.

Well, it's different depending on where you give birth.

If you're at the hospital, usually you're still there after 24 hours.

But if you did a birth center, then yeah, you would go back at like 24 or 48 hours.

Ship you out pretty fast for everything now.

Anyway, no, I have no pictures.

Of course, there weren't very many pictures in those days either.

Right.

It seems to me we gave them the outfits, and they dressed them.

They dressed them for you.

And then wheeled you out.

You carried the baby.

Did you have car seats?

No.

So you just rode home in the car carrying them in your lap?

Honestly, that sounds better.

Front seat and all.

Right there.

I won't tell you about the vacation we went on in a little Simca with the four of them, and how they rode.

You can tell us.

It was several years ago.

Don't worry.

I expect Jeff was probably a couple years old, maybe three even.

So it's like three, four, five, and six years old.

And we went to Philadelphia to visit friends.

And when we left, we left on the fourth of July.

And we left early enough to go down and see the Liberty Bell.

It was already like ten in the morning, it was a hundred degrees.

And this little thing did not have air.

It was a brand new car.

It had no air.

There was no air conditioning back then?

So we stopped at, I don't know where we would have stopped.

Wasn't a service station.

Somewhere I got a 50-pound bag of ice.

And I put it under my feet in the front seat.

We gave each kid a washcloth filled with ice.

And that's how they stayed cool.

Now the cool part is we had made two boards that laid from the back window to the front seat.

And one, the youngest, and then the next were on those two boards.

One behind the driver's seat, one behind the passenger seat.

One stretched out on the seat, and we had another board on the floor because there was a hump in the car.

And we made a board, and they were all padded, but that was how they rode.

So they could sleep laying down on these boards?

Well, that is so funny.

Now, isn't that ridiculous?

That's the way it was done.

I applaud you for taking a road trip with that many young children in the middle of the summer.

Like, just at all.

I get intimidated to drive, you know, an hour and a half with our four kids, five kids.

And we have air conditioning and car seats and all the different things.

I guess when you've never had, you don't know.

Right.

You don't know.

So you, yeah, you just get along.

So I'm just going to ask maybe one or two more questions.

What was it like back in the, I guess it's in the 60s, 1960s then, like raising four small children back to back to back to back?

I mean, did you have a community around you of other moms?

Were you alone?

Was like, I mean, because I know what it's like to have several small children, and yours were even closer together than mine.

So what, do you even remember that time period?

That's the key.

Probably the safest thing is to say you don't remember anything.

It went by.

You survived.

A community to help, no.

I had one friend I'd gone to school with who had two boys, and she had a third one same age as my, well, about four months, five months older than my last one.

So this was 64 when Jeff was born.

So hers would have been 63 and probably, I think he was born in October, but he was Mongoloid.

And she would come and visit and bring him, and the other two boys, of course, the kids, went off and played.

And I remember holding him and she never told me that there was anything wrong or anything not normal.

What does that mean, Mongoloid?

What does that mean?

It would be he was able to learn.

He was teachable, but he had facial expressions that weren't relaxed.

Very stiff body, not cuddly, like Indy folds up and he's soft and more rigid.

I had never seen a baby.

He turned out to be a great kid.

Very great.

He worked in a bank.

So like totally normal development after that.

It was just while he was a baby?

Well, if you've seen adults that have, there's a spatial look that you can see, facial.

So it's not like Down syndrome?

I don't think it's as bad.

I'm not sure about that.

The terminology may be the same.

I just remember to hold him, he was just rigid and it was sad.

That was a little bit of community that really touched my heart.

Was your mom able to help you at all?

The day I came home from the hospital, she quit smoking.

There's a story line there too, but we don't need to go into it.

So she'd had three kids, my three kids, with really no help.

Dad stayed at home, Jerry'd be in and out.

But I think you were in three days with a boy because they circumcised and two days with a girl.

So she'd been basically there three days with the kids.

And I laughingly always said to her, I think as I walked in the door, you walked out.

She walked out?

But anytime Jerry, wearing his soul full of brush and different times, he'd win vacations, weekends, and she always kept the kids.

And when the kids got older, I know Kathy, she took, well, my sister took over Kathy and kind of tried to make her her baby.

There was eight years difference in our ages, so she was fascinated with little ones.

Yeah.

There was them, but really, really nobody else.

I never went to work until Jeff was in kindergarten.

I went in the optical business.

Kind of ran it from there.

It wasn't far from the house, and they were very lenient if I needed to attend to anything that came up with them.

And they were on school, basically.

Kind of how we survived.

So you had four kids, who went on to have how many grandchildren?

We had ten grandchildren.

Ten grandchildren.

Ten, and the youngest now is 22.

Actually, this next month, no, March, you'll be 23, which is hard to believe.

So your youngest is 23, and then how many great grandchildren are we up to?

There's been some extra marriages that we've adopted those children in.

But all in all?

But all in all, I think it's 28 with what I say two in the hopper.

Two in the hopper.

So 28 and two more on the way.

Two on the way.

So you'll have 30.

Could be, and all very healthy.

Very blessed.

Oh my, when I see and hear what, you know, now we know more.

Right.

We don't need to, but we do.

And so blessed.

Well, I can't tell you how much of a blessing this is for me, because I've heard these stories before, usually on your porch, in the swing, drinking coffee.

But I wanted to record them.

I wanted to get them down.

I wanted to have them, not just, you know, for other people to hear, which I hope they enjoyed listening to a birth, well, four births in the 1950s and 60s, but also just for my memory and to be able to tell my kids one day, you know, and their kids and their kids.

And however, I hope to have 30 great grandchildren myself.

It is not a number I ever imagined.

It has been just one blessing after another.

And I don't think 10 grandchildren is a big number.

And I don't know, out of 10, shoot, if they each had two.

That'd be 20, but if they each had three, that's 30.

And it can add up.

It adds up pretty quickly.

But I had five for you.

So someone got to only have one or two somewhere in there.

You're just more brave than the rest.

I'm leading the way, Granny.

Bravery.

Five great kids, too.

I mean, it's not just five.

It's five blessings, because they are...

Well, we know we almost lost one, but that was kind of a slow reaction on the doctors and us.

But he's here and he's great.

Oh, well.

I love you.

I love you.

And this has been...

We're kissing each other across the microphone.

Across the way.

And I look forward to many, many more stories on your porch.

Yes, the porch.

The porch.

Thanks again for joining us today.

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