I feel that we women ought to discuss this question, because working
women often suffer terribly at these times with having to get up soon
after confinement: I myself being a great sufferer with bad legs
through getting up on the fifth day, although I had a doctor and
midwife to attend me. But I lived in a place where the women and girls
went to work in the mills, and could not get a woman to stay in the
home, and I was often left without for many hours. When the midwife
came, she advised me to have a bottle of stout and biscuits beside the
bed; but I refused, because I had never taken stout, and I thought no
food better than that. And I have trouble to this day with my legs.
Although well cared for during the last two confinements, it has never
remedied the unfortunate position of the first confinement.
_Wages 30s.; three children._