My parents were born in small town hospitals, one in northern Alberta and one in rural Saskatchewan. A hospital birth in the 1920s was considered an improvement over the previous riskier home births of a generation earlier. In Canada the maternal mortality rate in the 1920s was 5-6.5 per 1000 births. In 1928 the second leading cause of death for women of childbearing age was complication from pregnancy and childbirth. So our parents considered going to the hospital in time important for everyone’s survival.
When they had us, they usually went to hospital My sister was born in 1947 in a small town hospital and I was born in 1949 at the General Hospital in Calgary. By 1949 the maternal mortality rate in Canada had dropped to 1.5 deaths per 1000 live births. Hospitals were safe places.
In1920 a hospital stay after giving birth might last 10 -14 days and women were confined to bed to allow for recovery. However, with the post war baby boom there were bed shortages and the hospital stay lasted only 5-7 days following an uncomplicated vaginal delivery. So most of us were there about that length of time only.
In 1949 the 3 hospitals with wards for new mothers were the General, the Holy Cross and the Salvation Army Grace hospital. (Years later when my cohort were pregnant and about to give birth there were still stays there had changed. We new moms had ‘rooming in’ as a privilege, not just having babies down the hall in bassinets seen through windows like in the movies. In 1975 when some of us became mothers, the hospital stay was 4-7 days in Calgary after a vaginal birth and 1- 2 weeks after a caesarean. Fast forward another generation and those who gave birth in 1999 were often sent home from hospital within 24 – 48 hours of vaginal birth and 2-4 days after a Cesarean. )
Feeding the baby
Our mothers nearly always breast fed and if they could not the substitute milk was known to not be nearly as good as what mothers had. Some mothers used canned evaporated milk mixed with carbohydrate corn syrup. Similac was made in the 1920s, and Enfamil/ Mead Johnson made a canned formula also but they were often costly. It was known that evaporated milk did not give babies essential vitamins though so it was common for babies to be given supplementary drops of cod liver oil or orange juice to prevent scurvy and rickets. Pablum was invented in Toronto as an infant cereal during the 1930s and it had been pre -cooked, and fortified with vitamins and iron. Some mothers mixed the drug flakes with breast milk .The original formula had in it wheat, oatmeal, cornmeal, alfalfa, brewer’s yeast as well as vitamins and iron. So that is how our mothers had done it.
However when we came along, there were more options. In the early 1950s formula milk had been developed. It seemed like an efficient way to ensure babies got healthy nutrition without any mother discomfort. Calgary hospitals also often still separated mothers from babies and only brought them to the mother every four hours for feeding, supplementing back in the nursery ward with formula supplements anyway. Breastfeeding rates had become low by 1955 until in the 1960s it was noticed that infant formula was costly to purchase, and that it really was not as full a milk as breast milk. There was a trend back and by the time my boomer cohort had babies, breastfeeding was considered again a good option for mothers. Hospitals supported us either way . (Fast forward another generation and our kids, on giving birth were encouraged by medical professionals to breast feed. Pediatric societies even suggested it for babies up to age one- two years. )
So my cohort born in the 1949-1951 interval was often breastfed or bottle fed, with a greater likelihood of bottle.
This all means that none of us likely remember this stage of our lives, but it was a big part of our lives. It may even be that we developed an instinctive physical response to porridge like consistency.
In the 1950s when a baby cried mothers figured out if it needed a new diaper or to be fed but if it was just restless, they tried other options. One was a pacifier, at the time often called a soother or even by some a plug or dummy. Health care professionals did not all endorse these. At the time soothers were made of latex or natural India rubber. Doctors were sometimes concerned that the soother might degrade or that tooth development might be delayed or that the soother if not clean might spread germs. However other professionals said the baby needs to suck and this helps them do it .Having an actual device was an improvement some mothers felt over earlier versions of a sugary rag to suck on.
Baby Furniture
When the baby was taken home, it was not necessarily to a place of luxury. My husband’s parents used as his first crib a drawer taken out of a dresser. The movies may show high end cribs and bassinets of the rich but many of us were not that. Most households did set up a crib for the baby, often with wooden slats. Cribs of the 1940s had wooden spindles, sometimes floral decals and the fancier ones had drop side technology so moms could lift the baby in and out more easily. By the 1950s when we were born, there were also options of painted wood, and some were made with steel and chrome tubing. In our generation there was not a standard regulated size and some of us were in cribs with bars quite wide apart, in cribs painted with a lead based paint. A few generations later the design was regulated to ensure baby’s heads did not go between the slats and get stuck and that paint must not be lead based. Today’s cribs have to be 28 inches by 51 inches and bars must be under two inches apart.
We did have playpens. Wooden ones had been made since 1902 and most of us likely spent some time in one, with slats even farther apart – but we were awake then and so were our parents. In later generations such as when we had our own babies, playpens often were of metal tubing and what seemed at the time very high tech mesh sides. The baby could see out but not put their head out. The problem with that was that baby’s buttons and little fingers sometimes got caught in the mesh. So with baby furniture technology, each generation does its best. We live and learn.
My cohort did have baby carriages or as some cultures called them prams. But we were not rich so our carriages were pretty modest. It was apparently quite an innovation in the 1950s to make sure baby carriages had brakes. We did have little strollers, some of us. In 1889 a baby stroller had been created with a bassinet that could be turned to face forward or back. It was new in the 1880s to have a stroller with independent axle wheels so it would turn corners more easily.
By the 1950s my cohort had the little metal stroller frames ones with a low seat and good luck staying in there. The umbrolla foldable stroller was only invented later, in 1965. We did not yet have any running stroller that athletes used in the 1980s.
Baby clothing
Our parents used cloth diapers. However this did require doing a lot of laundry. My dad used to tell me laughingly about how much work it had been to hand wash the diapers with a rubbing board every few days. I suspect he was not the one who did this work. Rubber pants had been invented in the 1920s to put over the diaper and the good thing was they did keep in the urine. The less good thing was that the stiff pants were uncomfortable and often were so airless that diaper rash resulted. By the 1950s PVC and other plastics were replacing rubber and latex pants for babies but my cohort did not wear disposable diapers. They were not invented until the 1960s.
1951 – Waterproof diaper cover
1961 – disposable diapers, Pampers
We were put in sleepers for overnight and sometimes in two piece outfits with tops and little pants. Many of us wore bonnets, cotton or lacy, hand knit sometimes and often apparently in pastels for gender. The clothes had to be washable and fairly hardy for wear, especially as we got more mobile.
As toddlers we mostly were in cotton and wool. There were newer synthetics like nylon and Orlon acrylic but I don’t think my sister and I had those. Gingham and seersucker were popular for play dresses, rompers and sunsuits. For more robust play some toddlers were dressed in flannel.
I have a theory that as with music or slang there is a bridge in culture and any new generation for a time just uses what the earlier one did. Mothers in the 1950s likely dressed their kids in clothes their own mothers suggested. We got a lot of hand knit matching bonnets, sweaters, mittens and booties. But we used them less. When we became mothers often we did not ourselves knit .
For formal events, of which we had few, some kids had broadcloth dresses Corduroy was very useful for play trousers and for overalls. Boys and girls were dressed quite differently from each other. Fast forward a generation and that was less true. When my cohort had kids there was a big fad to avoid gender stereotyping, to let little girls play in the dirt and little boys play with dolls and to not use gendered colors for baby outfits. However in the 2020s gender reveal parties often do use the color code.
beverleysmith-cnjyv 