1926

My great-grandmother wrote to me on my birthday to tell me what it was like to be pregnant 81 years ago. I thought it would be fun to share.

Dear Erin:
I do wish you a very, very happy birthday. I'm sure Richard has something big planned for you. First of all, I want to tell you what it was like to be pregnant in 1926. I didn't go to the doctor right away. Nobody did. But in the 2nd month when my morning sickness was so bad, I went to see what the doctor would suggest. Mainly, it was just grin and bear it! Not to eat anything in the morning with milk in it and just something dry. Mine sometimes lasted all day. So, then he started to give me other orders for pregnancy. Be careful what you eat. Eat a well balanced diet, including plenty of calcium so your baby will have strong bones. Important to do exercises, not strenuous, but walking a lot. The next thing was to be sure you wore a girdle. In those days there weren't stretch girdles, they were all corsets, so he said to buy a corset with laces so you could make it bigger. His explanation was that you needed something to help you hold up the load in your belly. If the muscles had to do it all themselves they would stretch out too much. By giving support, they would regain their normal condition after giving birth. I didn't go every month, but went at about 4 months and he asked if I felt life yet and I said "no" and he said in about 2 weeks I would and he was right. So from then on it should have been 4-1/2 more months until I delivered. It happened that my baby was two weeks early. It was a boy, my son Charles. The doctor said it was normal for boys to be early and girls would be late. Then, after giving birth you stayed in the hospital 14 days and became so weak you could hardly walk. Then I got my mother to stay with me for a couple of weeks until I was strong and able to take care of the baby. Chicago at that time had a wonderful program for mothers and babies. Every month after the baby was born we went to a free clinic mainly to check out the baby, see if it had gained the right amount, if everything was normal and to be sure to continue breast feeding. If you had too much milk, they suggested you get a breast pump and pump out the extra milk. That way it was always fresh. And, of course, every other breast every day. At 4 months we would start feeding baby food. I think it was called Pablum at that time. At 6 months you could start feeding mashed potatoes or mashed carrott and things like pudding, even ice cream and from then on increase the food. So when you weaned the baby, he'd be eating on his own, drinking milk and water. The next thing they taught you when you went to the clinic in the early months was how to train your baby to be out of diapers by the time they were 15 months old. There were no Pampers, you just washed diapers. Certainly no one would have a baby in diapers at 18 months. The doctor said if the baby could say "mama" or "daddy" they could also say "potty". I took that seriously and Charles was out of diapers at 15 months and Shirley at 14 months. If you had a child that wet the bed, it was not a lack of training it was some ailment the child had and you just had to wait until the child outgrew it. So that was my pregnancy in 1926. In 1928 when I was carrying Shirley, I didn't do so good. I ate too much and I gained too much weight and so did my baby. My first baby was under 8 lbs. Shirley was over 9 lbs. So, it is important to eat right. So much for all of that.

I thought this was a very sweet letter. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.