My experience during and after my second pregnancy is only one example
of what thousands of married working women have to endure. My husband
has always been a very delicate man, and was ill most of the time I
carried both my children. He had been out of employment eight months
out of the nine I carried my first child.... As a last resource was
glad to go to work on the railway for the magnificent wage of 17s. a
week, and had to walk nearly six miles night and morning or pay 5d. a
day for train fare. Our rent was 7s. 6d. a week and clubs to be paid.
By the time my second child was born my husband’s wages had increased
to £1 1s. a week for seventy-two hours. By that time hard work and
worry and insufficient food had told on my once robust constitution,
with the result that I nearly lost my life through want of nourishment,
and did after nine months of suffering lose my child. No one but
mothers who have gone through the ordeal of pregnancy half starved,
to finally bring a child into the world to live a living death for
nine months, can understand what it means.... It was the Women’s
Co-operative Guild which saved me from despair.
The first confinement I managed to get through very well, having some
money left from what I had saved before marriage. But how I managed
to get through my second confinement I cannot tell anyone. I had to
work at laundry work from morning to night, nurse a sick husband,
and take care of my child three and a half years old. In addition
I had to provide for my coming confinement, which meant that I had
to do without common necessaries to provide doctor’s fees, which so
undermined my health that when my baby was born I nearly lost my life,
the doctor said through want of nourishment. I had suffered intensely
with neuralgia, and when I inquired among my neighbours if there was
anything I could take to relieve the pain, I was told that whatever I
took would do no good; it was quite usual for people to suffer from
neuralgia, and I should not get rid of it till my baby was born.
I had to depend on my neighbours for what help they could give during
labour and the lying-in period. They did their best, but from the
second day I had to have my other child with me, undress him and see
to all his wants, and was often left six hours without a bite of food,
the fire out and no light, the time January, and snow had lain on the
ground two weeks.
When I got up after ten days my life was a perfect burden to me. I lost
my milk and ultimately lost my baby. My interest in life seemed lost. I
was nervous and hysterical; when I walked along the streets I felt that
the houses were falling on me, so I took to staying at home, which of
course added to the trouble.
Now, is it possible under such circumstances for women to take care of
themselves, during pregnancy, confinement, and after? Can we any longer
wonder why so many married working women are in the lunatic asylums
to-day? Can we wonder that so many women take drugs, hoping to get rid
of the expected child, when they know so little regarding their own
bodies, and have to work so hard to keep or help to keep the children
they have already got? If only the State would do something that would
give _all_ working mothers the assurance that during pregnancy, where
needed, means would be provided whereby they could get an all-important
rest before confinement, and that proper attention should be provided
during and after so long as necessary. It would make all the difference
between a safe and speedy confinement, a better offspring, therefore
a better asset of the State, and a broken-down motherhood, and a race
of future parents who start in life very often with a constitution
enfeebled through the mother having to undergo privation, as well as
the mental and physical strain that childbirth entails.
_Wages 17s. to £1 1s.; two children._