Here is the second part of the excerpt about Barbara Comyns' labour and delivery in a Depression-era London hospital, taken from her semi-autobiographical Our Spoons Came From Woolworths
Suddenly it changed and I was on a kind of trolley. The next place I found myself was a brilliantly lighted room with two doctors and a nurse. As soon as I arrived in the room I could tell they were going to be kind. I was lifted off the trolley on to a very high kind of bed-table arrangement. I looked round the room and saw there were two little cots, and in one was a baby that had just been born. I could hear it making queer little noises.
I explained to the nurse that I kept being sick all the time, but she didn't seem to mind. Every time I had a great pain she made me pull a twisted sheet that was fixed to the head of the bed in some way, and she would say, "Bear down, Mother." I tried to explain I wasn't a mother, but couldn't get it out. In between the pains they asked me questions so that they could fill even more forms.
I looked for Doctor Wombat, but he wasn't there. I did not mind, because the doctors that were there seemed kind and so was the nurse except she kept hurrying me up. There was one dreadful thing -- they made me put my legs in kind of slings that must have been attached to the ceiling; besides being very uncomfortable it made me feel dreadfully shamed and exposed. People would not dream of doing such a thing to an animal. I think the ideal way to have a baby would be in a dark, quiet room, all alone and not hurried. Perhaps your husband would be just outside the door in case you felt lonely. When once the baby had arrived I would not mind how many nurses and doctors came in attendance.
One of the doctors stood by my head and said he would give me something to put me to sleep in a minute, and the nurse kept urging me to bear down and I could feel everyone trying to hurry me up. Then I was enveloped in a terrific sea of pain, and I heard myself shouting in an awful, snoring kind of voice. Then they gave me something to smell and the pain dimmed a little. The pain started to grow again, but I didn't seem to mind. I suddenly felt so interested in what was happening. The baby was really coming now and there it was between my legs. I could feel it moving and there was a great tugging in my tummy where it was still attached to me. Then I heard it cry, so I knew it was alive and was able to relax. Perhaps I went to sleep. The next thing I knew was the doctor pressing my tummy, but although it hurt, it didn't seem to matter.
I asked the nurse what kind of baby it was and if it was perfect. She said, of course it was, but I asked her to make sure it had all its fingers and toes. She laughed and said it was a lovely little boy, rather small, but quite healthy.
I couldn't help crying when I heard it was a boy, because I knew there wasn't much chance of Charles [ed. note: her husband*] liking it, now it was a boy -- he particularly disliked little boys. I longed to see the baby, but they said I couldn't yet. It had stopped crying and I was worried in case it was dead. So I cried about that, too.
*There wasn't much chance of Charles liking a baby of equal sex -- he turned out to be a pretty terrible father who wanted first to hand the baby off to an orphanage and then to distant relatives. If you missed it, this excerpt deals with the young, poverty-stricken couple's reaction to the news of the pregnancy.
The whole thing is almost comically horrifying. Might be less horrifying if it was less true, I guess.
Posted by: Melissa | February 27, 2009 at 09:20 PM