1950s U.S. Maternity Wards

[myxginxblossoms]

I'm looking for descriptions of typical hospital procedures, particularly on maternity wards, in the early 1950s. (The story in question takes place in 1951 Manhattan, but any sources within about five years either direction would be acceptable for my purposes

Comments

[cheshire23]

This is from 1957, but the account Deborah Spungen gives of her first daughter's birth in And I Don't Want to Live This Life is pretty good in terms of how bewildering it is for a 20 year old first-time mom in Philadelphia whose newborn experienced complications

[dhole]

There's an article I came across a while back, that talks about this from the nurse's point of view; I think that you can find the whole thing at

http://books.google.co.il/books?id=G9Zj-OXckD8C&pg=PA180&dq=%22strange+young+women+on+errands%22&hl=en&ei=Pdc_TeD1LomGswa0_aD5BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22strange%20young%20women%20on%20errands%22&f=false

It starts in the 30s, but it moves on to the 50s.

[reynardo]

We had a book at school that frightened the life out of me that was a sex-ed book from 1960. It basically said things like:

When you come in while you're in labour,
- Your pubic hair will be all shaved off
- You will be put in a nightgown on a hospital bed
- You will be given an enema
- Your hands will be tied to the sides of the bed/trolley so that you don't touch the sterile area where the baby will be coming out.
- They will sedate you if they feel you're not coping (eg making too much noise), and they will give you pethedine early on. There were no options on this.
- You *will* have an episiotomy, because you don't want the baby to spend too long coming out, do you?

Etc. Now excuse me while I run away in terror...

[pensnest]

I can offer you an anecdote from my late mother-in-law's experience, if it helps-she gave birth in the mid-'50s, in the UK, not the US. She told me there was confusion when the nurses approached her about feeding the baby: she told them "I feed him myself" and they couldn't seem to understand what she meant-did she want a bottle, or a teaspoon to feed the baby with? No, she wanted to breastfeed. Which they found bizarre.

[donald_r_oddy]

Breast-feeding was just coming back in to favour at this time. Both I (born 1952) and my sister (1955) in the UK were breastfed. But I'm sure there were variations between hospitals and doctors.

Something else was that a much lower percentage of births took place in hospital than today. In the UK at least it was common for births to occur at home with a midwife. My sister was born at home and dad did the fetching and carrying for the midwife.

[marycatelli]

Madeleine L'Engle had trouble in 1947 in the US wanting to breastfeed her daughter. Then the nurses tried to cut the 2AM feeding. When L'Engle said they were theater people and were up at 2AM, let's cut the 9AM -- she had to fight over it.

[parmalokwen]

My grandmother was having her kids during the late 1940's and 1950's, and if I recall correctly, she said it was typical to keep the new mother in bed for an entire week.