1974 Maternity Ward Pamphlet for New Mothers
Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 3:44AM
This pamphlet was given to pregnant women at a hospital in Southern California in 1974.
We of the Maternity Services of _____ Hospital welcome you. We sincerely hope your time spent with us will be happy and rewarding. So that you will feel comfortable with the routines necessary to our department, we have outlined them for you. They have come about because of the need to protect you (and through you, your baby.) For example, all but your most essential contacts with “outsiders” must be eliminated so your baby receives the best possible chance during the first few days of life, since he has built up very little resistance, as yet. (Most of these regulations are based on the laws and regulations of the State Department of Health.)
WHILE YOU ARE IN THE LABOR AND DELIVERY AREAS—
- You may have one visitor at a time while you are in the labor-room wing.
- You should not get out of bed without the permission of the nurse.
- You should not eat or drink anything without the permission of the nurse.
- All ear-rings, pins and hair rollers should be removed from your hair before going into the delivery room as these may prove hazardous.
- Do not chew gum without the permission of the nurse.
- If you wear dentures, removable bridges or contact lenses be sure the nurse is aware of this before you go into the delivery room.
IN THE MATERNITY AREA (AFTER YOUR BABY IS BORN)—
- After you have washed your hands, in preparation for your baby at feeding time, do not smoke or use the telephone until your baby is taken back to the nursery.
- Do not walk in the halls while babies are out with the mothers. Again, the fewer contacts a baby has with people, the better he will be.
- Visitors may not sit on the beds whether they are occupied or not. Remember your baby is placed on your bed while he is with you.
- If you have had a saddle block anesthetic, stay flat in bed. Do not raise your head on your elbow. Stay flat until a nurse tells you it is all right to sit up.
- A nurse must assist you when you get out of bed for the first time. You may be weaker than you think!
- Menus:
- Someone will collect your menu, so do not leave it on your food tray.
- Be sure you mark all desired food and condiments.
- Mark size of portions desired.
- Be sure your name is on all three sections of your menu.
- Since your baby is especially wrapped so that he can safely be taken back into the nursery, it is requested that you not unwrap your baby when he is with you. If you desire to see him unwrapped, one of the nursery nurses will do it for you.
- Do not sit on the side of the bed to feed your bay. You and the baby will be safer and more comfortable if you have a back rest.
- The nursery nurses are available at any time to assist you with breast feeding or to answer any questions you may have.
- When you are ready for your baby, be sure that the top sheet and spread are pulled up so that the baby can be placed on the spread.
- It is suggested that, if you are nursing your baby, you gown opens in the front for convenience.
- The schedule of activities for the mother must be planned around the baby’s visits to the mother. Listed below are the approximate time that there activities are scheduled:
1) Awakened at 5 A.M. to prepare for baby’s first visit of the day. Coffee is available at this time.
2) The babies are brought out to the mothers at: 5:30 A.M. – 10:00 A.M. – 1:30 P.M. – 5:30 P.M. Babies are brought out at 10:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M. only at the request of the mother or the pediatrician.
3) Meals are served at:
7:45 A.M. – 11:45 A.M. – 4:45 P.M.
Nourishments are served at:
10:30 – 11:00; 2:30 – 3:00; and 9:00 P.M.
4) Showers can be taken:
8:15 to 9:30 A.M. (and other times, if necessary)
5) “Peri-Care”: at 4:00 P.M.
Heat lamps – after shower, and at 4:00 P.M.
6) Visiting hours:
2:30 to 4:00 P.M. and 7:00 to 8:00 P.M.
7) Babies are shown (through Nursery Windows):
Immediately after birth, and 3:30 to 4:00 P.M.
and 7:30 to 8:00 P.M.
WE APPRECIATE YOUR HELPING US DO A BETTER JOB.
Reader Comments (28)
Blech. How depressing. I feel so bad for those moms. Four scheduled times a day to be with your baby?!? And don't unwrap her without help from a nurse!
How awful to be forced to be separated from your baby.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this. Quite scary about how rigid the hospital "rules" were back then. Believe it or not, we have actually moved forward in the last few decades. But we still have a long way to go!
When did the poor babies eat?! So staff is on hand to help with breastfeeding, but only a few times a day will you be allowed to feed your baby...*sigh*
Wow. Just wow.
That was the year my husband was born...definitely sending this to his mom! I like how smoking is ok, just not with the baby in the room. Not sure why you can't use the phone while holding the baby though.
Golly! Sounds like Mother may I meets Nurse Ratched.
Well I don't know, when I had my daughter in 1987 you could SMOKE in the patient rooms. We all four of us had to agree to bring the babies back to the nursery and we all had those little foil ashtrays at our disposal. I was laughing about it recently when I had my baby there, the staff remembers it too.
No wonder they were so distressed with me when I had my C section in 1973! I unwrapped the baby every time they brought him. When they told me he was crying in the nursery, and asked if I had enough milk, I told them not to let him cry, to bring him to me. I got the pediatrician I had been assigned, who turned out to be wonderful, to write an order that this was OK. They still mostly didn't do it as the idea was so foreign to them, but it happened a few times when his insistent crying bothered them too much. I wouldn't feed him bottles of sugar water. Dumping them down the sink probably messed up their Intake and Output records considerably. I always insisted that they bring him at night. I do remember a nurse saying persuasively, "We usually give the babies a bottle at night so the mothers can get some sleep. You've been through a major operation. You have to heal and you need your sleep. It won't be long before he is keeping you awake at night. Why don't you just take this one night to get some sleep?" It was very difficult for me to squeak out "I would still rather you bring him." I say squeak out because my throat was closing with the emotion of the effort of opposing authority.
With my first VBAC in 74 the baby went to the nursery only once, when I first went to my room. Then they brought her, I nursed her and slept with her, and in the morning we went home. My husband stayed the whole time. I didn't know how unusual this was for those days.
Susan Peterson
Emjaybee,
Phone germs were a leading cause of death in 1974.
/sarcasm
@emjaybee -- I think the "no smoking" and the "no talking on the phone" was in reference to the germs the mother might pick up and then transfer to her baby while the baby was in the room, thus "contaminating" the baby, and when the baby was taken back to the nursery, it would then "contaminate" the rest of the "sterile" (ha!) nursery.
I was born in 1974, and hubby in 1972. I've heard the bad stories about being stuck in the hospital for a week after a routine vaginal delivery and being forced to sit in sitz baths and look at your baby in the nursery, all the while only having your husband drop in once per day.
For the few women who were breastfeeding, how did they get enough access to the baby? Must ask my mom.
Feed baby every 4-4.5 hours. Yep, that's the way to bring in a great milk supply!
My brother was born in the early 70's. My mother managed to breastfeed him for 6 weeks. She said she was told to feed by a 4 hourly schedule, 10 minutes each side, and to supplement him with formula between feeds. It was also expected that once you were home, you bathed baby at the same time each day, kept to the schedule and keep house and hubby in a particular way...
In the late 70's, she had my sister and me. A few weeks before we were born a new book was being promoted on the radio "breast is best". My dad heard about it, and bought the book for my mum. That book became their bible, so to speak. It told them to demand feed. She breastfeed us without supplement for 14 mths (about 4 mths exclusively, then in conjunction with solids).
My mother was born in the late 40's, her mother remembers only that she cried alot, and asks me about the schedule? She won't ring at 10 am, because she assumed I will be bathing the baby. She was worried when we left the hospital the day the baby was born, because you need to stay in bed for 2 weeks...
Times have changed (for the better), but there is still so far to go..
no phone....lol
i think they were just afraid Freddy Kruegers tongue might come through the phone and lick you spreading "Freddy germs"....lol
This breaks my heart. My oldest was born in 1982 in Orlando and it wasn't much different; we tended to be about 10 years behind with everything.
- It is unbelievable we used to smoke in hospitals. I watch "St. Elsewhere" and it's surreal seeing patients and doctors smoking side by side. I was in the hospital several times in 1979 and we all smoked there in the unit. Guh-ROSS!
- The Peri-Care... ah, yes... peri-care. Because 90% of vaginal birth'd women had episiotomies, peri-care was an organized ritual including sitz baths and then the peri-light... a large heat lamp with nothing covering the sides or front, often red, and it blazed hot as fire. After our showers, we'd climb back in bed, usually 4 to a room, close the curtains around the beds, lie on our backs, legs spread and bake our vulvas/perineums. The theory was to keep it clean and dry and that heat would speed healing. I actually enjoyed the heat, but it was probably more for the it's-getting-air time than the heat. We also were all given Epi-Foam or some other numbing foam or spray for our epis recovery... the Epi-Foam was in the same bag they gave us that had our pads and peri-bottle. We were all instructed to continue the heat lamp at home; I did.
- I laughed reading that about hair rollers!! Women just don't wear those anymore. Back in the olden days, women went *everywhere* in their rollers. I remember seeing women in the movie theaters, stores and then, once I was a doula in 1983, even in L&D. I'd totally forgotten about that. When I started teaching childbirth classes, we'd suggest the women use the soft foam curlers instead of the hard plastic ones. Isn't that a hoot?!
- They were wicked weird about germs back then. The pic of my birth with my first (1982), I had a hair covering and my spouse at the time was even masked and gowned! IN A VAGINAL BIRTH! I remember being told, more than a few times, to KEEP MY HANDS OFF THE STERILE FIELD... which was everything from nipples to toes. I tried reaching for Tristan and I think the nurse either slapped me or grabbed my hand to stop me. She put them in the (loose) arms restraints to "help you remember where they stay." Instincts are hard to override. Many of those older nurses, if they knew what birth was going to be like today, they would have crapped their scrubs.
- And yes. Feeding times. Very strict, very severe in their rules about when, how long on each side and *forcing* us to "get some rest" by leaving our babies in the nursery. I remember walking to the nursery window (that they pretty much kept open all the time) and crying, looking at my son crying for me. It never even dawned on me to ask for him; how sad is that? I can see visiting hours even now, 28 years later... all the families and friends cooing over the screaming newborns. "Awww, listen to his lungs! He's so strong!" We were all brainwashed. Well, blessedly, not *everyone*... those that were not helped wake the rest of us up. :)
I remember visiting my mother in hospital in the 70s when my siblings were being born.(Australia) I remember taking a card to the nursery to see my sister and brothers. (3 separate births) I vividly remember my mother being hysterical about my youngest brother being in the nursery. She was crying that she wanted her baby, bring her baby to her, then she stormed to the nursery to take him back to the shared room. He would have been only 3 -4 hours old. I knew she was very upset, but didn't really comprehend until my own daughter was born 20 months ago. I feel really upset when I remember how upset my mother was. My daughter was by my side the whole time we were in the hospital. In fact in my hospital there was no nursery to leave your baby in unless there was a health issue with the baby.
I was born in 1973, my brother in 76. My mother nursed us both for six months. I'm amazed she was able to with these guidelines. I give her a lot of credit for it.
Kris, I could have written that comment verbatim (substitute 1974 and 1975, though).
My mom had babies in '72 and '74 - in military hospitals no less and she was able to BF us both (14 months and 9 months respectively). It's testimony to how well the system (ie women's bodies) actually work that they can deal with such stress and sometimes still do it. My SIL also put her baby on a schedule of eating every 3 hrs from birth, apparently 'cause they did such a good job at the hospital of putting him on a schedule when she was in the nursery. And they were able to BF successfully long term as well. I personally cannot imagine willfully handing over my baby to a nursery, not for extra sleep, not for any reason. I was watching one of those terribly sad episodes of 16 & pregnant the other day and the whole family was clustered around the nursery window, and my jaw hit the floor. I know this is naive, but I thought - they still DO THAT?
Very interesting! I was born in '75 and it sounds like my mom's hospital was very advanced for the day. She was allowed to room in with me day and night. Of course, it wasn't all a bowl of cherries- her ob gave her a routine episiotomy even though I was a scant 6 lbs, 6 oz and was already flying out, and the extent of the assistance she received with breastfeeding was a nurse coming in and asking "Are you going to nurse the baby or do you want the shot to dry up your milk?" When my mom answered "Nurse," the nurse handed me to her and left the room. Luckily my mom and I were naturals!
My brother was born in 1975 via c-section and I arrived 10 months later (!!) in 1976 via c-section. My mom says they had no idea when she got pregnant as she was breastfeeding my brother, so they just scheduled a date and pulled me out. It was 2 months too early based on my lung development, so I spent 6 weeks in the NICU. My mother never got to hold me or breastfeed me, it was formula for all the NICU babies in that "advanced" California hospital. Her doctor also forced her to stop breastfeeding my brother when they found out she was pregnant, as it was "bad for the pregnancy to continue". I am so grateful we have better information now.