B – Baby must NEVER sleep in bed with his mother.

There was also a set of instructions in Fenella’s 1950 book entitled ‘First Advice and Instructions’ and a ‘Suggested Routine for Baby’. The first advice was directed toward mother and included the following:

MOTHER to have plain, wholesome diet, including meat, fish, eggs, cheese,

vegetables, including raw salads, fresh and dried fruits, wholemeal bread and butter, wholemeal porridge, milk puddings. Use iodised salt in cooking and at table.

DRINK at least one pint of milk daily, and a glass of water each time you feed

baby.

AVOID rich, fatty foods such as pork, pastry, rich cake, too many sweets, or too

much cocoa.

REST for half to one hour daily with feet up. RETIRE early at night.

SMOKING should be avoided.506

A Suggested Daily Routine for baby was included:

6 am. Change, feed, and put to bed to sleep.

9.30am. Sun-bathe when old enough; then bath, feed, hold out, and put to bed to sleep outside in sheltered spot if possible, or on a balcony or verandah.

2pm. Change, feed, hold out, and put to bed, outside if possible. When older, put in play-pen for exercise.

4pm. Give fresh fruit juice.

5.30pm. Wash face, hands, and buttocks; change into night clothes. Feed, hold out, and put to bed.

10pm. Change, feed, hold out, and tuck down for night. SIT baby up during and after feed to get up wind.507

Fenella was bottle fed from at least three weeks of age, possibly earlier. The nurse has included the usual detailed recipe for humanised milk as well as suggesting cod liver oil and orange juice or rose hip syrup as supplements. Fenella’s mother may have been having difficulty with the milk preparation; at five weeks of age despite Fenella having been bottle fed since at least three weeks of age, the nurse has included detailed instructions on how to prepare the milk in the book:

Mix dried milk Karilac to a smooth paste with a little cool boiled water. Add boiling water to make the amount up to 28oz.508

At six weeks, the nurse notes that Fenella hated cod liver oil. By nine weeks Fenella was more content and the recipes continued with gradual increases in quantities until Fenella was a year old at which time she started on scalded milk. The same supplementary diet sheet for six to nine month olds that had been given to David’s mum a decade earlier has also been given to Fenella’s mum and pasted into the book.

The weight charts during this period underwent some change as well. In 1947 the weight charts had gone from a single page ¼ A4 size to taking up two pages of the larger sized book. In addition to the average line that was still present, there were two further lines – one to each side of the average line with the area in between these two shaded. This section represented where an average baby should fit in terms of weight. The new chart went up to 52 weeks and was located in the middle of the Plunket book.509 Fenella’s weight chart has been completed

507 _{Plunket books PBCO1, 1947 and PBFJ1, 1950} 508 _{Plunket book PBFJ1, 1950}

through until she was 12 months old. There is a further chart in the book for 12 to 18 months and this has also been fully completed. There are entries in Fenella’s book through until she was 18 months of age although comments are short noting only length, head and chest circumferences and condition of bowels.

‘Holding out’ was recommended by the Plunket Society as a means of

encouraging infants to move the bowels soon after feeding. In practice, a sheet of newspaper or some form of catching device was placed on the floor and

immediately after baby was fed he or she was held in a sitting position over the newspaper in order to catch a bowel motion. If successful, this usually meant less dirty laundry for the mother so was a practice that although had little impact on toilet training, lessened the mothers workload somewhat.

Many of the participants in this study gave birth during the period 1946-1970. Their experiences in preparing for and giving birth provide an insight into childbirth during the post-war years in New Zealand. The birth of a child for these mothers occurred during a time where extended hospitalisation and medical care of the mother and child during child birth was at its peak and as a result disruption to normal, everyday life was extensive. As such, it was impossible to talk to mothers about the Plunket book without also hearing their stories of the events leading up to and surrounding the birth of their child. These women stayed in hospital for up to fourteen days, were often not allowed out of bed for the first few days, and often the only time they held their baby was to feed.

Well in those days you stayed in hospital for two weeks after baby was born. You weren’t allowed to get out of bed for the first twenty-four hours, it was bedpan and every time you needed to pee the nurse would have to come with the sterile kit and wipe you and all the rest of it. It was a major pain. (Caitlyn, 64)510

Nancy who was 82 at the time of interview could clearly remember that in each month during her pregnancy she was required to line up at the Queen Mary Hospital for the

‘monthly interview’511 Not only was the Queen Mary Hospital ‘bursting at the seams’ from the post-World War Two baby boom, but Nancy also remembers having to take along her ‘sample’:

We had to take along our urine sample of course. I remember taking along a great big bottle [laughs] before I realised they only needed a snippet. (Nancy, 82)512

Nancy stayed in hospital for fourteen days following the birth of her first child. She expressed the same sentiments as Caitlyn regarding the process. ‘…[they] swabbed this and changed that. It was awful. [laugh]’513 Again, Nancy was not allowed out of bed and was also not permitted to handle the baby until the day before she went home.

Nora prepared extensively for the birth of her first child taking part in an antenatal group run by the local Anglican minister’s wife.514 She was also extensively prepared:

510 _{Interview with Caitlyn, 19 October 2004, paragraph 21.}

511 _{Interview with Jenny & Nancy, 9 December 2004, paragraph 55.} 512 _{Interview with Jenny & Nancy, 9 December 2004, paragraph 75.} 513 _{Interview with Jenny & Nancy, 9 December 2004, paragraph 87.} 514 _{Interview with Nora, October 7 2004, paragraph 47.}

Vignette 14 Caitlyn (64)

Caitlyn was born in 1941 in Auckland. She grew up in Sandringham and attended Auckland Girls Grammar School. After leaving school, Caitlyn worked in a laboratory. She married at 22 and continued working in the laboratory until she was pregnant with her first child. Caitlyn has 3 children born in 1965, 1967 and 1970.

…I was still, you know, very nervous about bathing the baby. I think my mother-in-law came around when I was supposed to be bathing baby and that was because it was the first time that I actually bathed in a full size baby bath. Which was actually of course a lot easier than one of the stupid round little things because the baby would actually lie lengthwise if you supported it underneath. But I was very nervous…

…and in those days, you’d have a bath and I was shaved. My pubic hair was shaved! I didn’t realize how awful it was until it started growing back and you couldn’t walk properly because it was all prickly. Oh dear, that was

terrible. I think we had to have an enema as well, so undignified. (Nora, 69)515

This extensive preparation and

treatment of women during pregnancy and childbirth from the 1930s is reflective of what some authors claim

to be the biomedicalization of childbirth.516 But it was also a time during which infection and puerpuerial death were not uncommon. New Zealand went through a period of high maternal mortality in the 1920s and a Royal Commission was set up to investigate. The Kelvin Hospital Commission recommended all births be treated as aseptic procedures, transforming childbirth from a largely natural process to one entirely controlled by the medical profession.517 However, in a way that was similar to the uptake by women of the ‘Truby King method’ of child rearing as a means of ensuring the survival of their children, women were also open to protecting themselves and their infants from death during childbirth through acceptance of the hygiene practices of the time.

During the post war years and into the 1950s and 60s the family was seen as the backbone of New Zealand society. The family was a close-knit grouping of mother, father and children living together in harmony. Images such as those of the royal family were seen as the ideal to live up to and May argues that a new

515 _{Interview with Nora, October 7 2004, paragraph 49.}

516 _{Oakley, From Here to Maternity.; Kedgley, Mum's the Word: The Untold Story of Motherhood}

in New Zealand

517 _{Kedgley, Mum's the Word: The Untold Story of Motherhood in New Zealand} Vignette 15 Nora (69)

Nora was born in Tauranga in 1936. She was an only child until her sister arrived when Nora was nine years old. She moved with her family to Auckland in 1947 and later trained to be an occupational therapist. Nora’s occupational therapist training took place at the Auckland Mental Hospital (later Carrington) and included a practical stint at Seacliffe Mental Hospital near Dunedin – a period of time that stands out in her mind as much for the isolation at Seacliffe as well as the patients she worked with. Nora met and later married her husband in 1962. Nora has four children and currently lives in Auckland.

…I think when I went home as a new mum I was so frightened with this little thing and I was so scared I would do the wrong thing and if she cried, I’d wonder why…my Mum was in Auckland, we were about two and a bit hours away. In those days people didn’t sort of travel that far so easily. So the Plunket nurse was a real godsend. I hung on her every word…

style of relationship saw men becoming increasingly involved in domestic life.518 The 1950s in New Zealand was a period during which motherhood was still the prevailing role for women. Women who may have been intensively involved in the war effort were now expected to return to looking after their children and husbands at home. The ideology of perfect motherhood was played out in the suburban streets and backroads of most towns and cities throughout the country with mothers expected to spend their time at home with their children. However, there was growing interest internationally in more permissive methods of

childbirth and childrearing such as Dr Spock’s more relaxed approach to motherhood519 and John Bowlby’s ideas that separation of mother and child at birth or in hospital was damaging to the psychological development of the

child.520 Mothers started to look at alternate means of childbirth and childrearing, and in 1953 the Parents Centre was formed by a group of women interested in natural childbirth.521

The Parents Centre advocated for women to listen to their own instincts when caring for their children and challenged the prevailing ideology around strict routines.522 The Playcentre movement also reflected many of the more relaxed ideas around child care and offered women further opportunities to socialise outside the home and become experts in early childhood without being separated from their children. Playcentre believed strongly in allowing children to utilise free play as a means to explore the environment and learn while being encouraged and taught by their own mothers and had been advocating this since it’s inception in 1941.523 La Leche League’s philosophies encouraging women to actively participate in breastfeeding, allowing infants unlimited access to the breast, and

518 _{May, "Postwar Women 1945-1960 and Their Daughters 1970-1985: An Analysis of}

Continuity, Contradiction, and Change in Two Generations of Pakeha Women as Mothers, Wives, and Workers."

519 _{Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.} 520 _{Bowlby, Child Care and the Growth of Love.}

521 _{M. Bell, "The Pioneers of Parent's Centre: Movers and Shakers for Change in the Philosophies}

and Practices of Childbirth and Parent Education in New Zealand," PhD thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 2004.

522 _{Bell, "The Pioneers of Parent's Centre: Movers and Shakers for Change in the Philosophies and}

Practices of Childbirth and Parent Education in New Zealand."; Kedgley, Mum's the Word: The Untold Story of Motherhood in New Zealand

523 _{D. Hill, R. Reid and S. Stover, "More Than Educating Children: The Evolutionary Nature of}

Playcentre's Philosophy of Education," Good Clean Fun: New Zealand's Playcentre Movement, ed. S. Stover (Auckland: Playcentre Publications, 1998).

advocating infant lead weaning were also instrumental in changing prevailing ideas around childbirth and childcare at the time.524 The Plunket Society,

however, was slow to pick up on these ideas and continued to advocate adherence to relatively strict methods of childrearing. Four hourly feeds, limited time on the breast, and strict routines for sleeping, eating, bathing, and holding out continued to be demanded. Encouraging babies to spend time out of doors was a further requirement and some of the participants in this study recalled how they achieved this with their children:

I had a Vantage pram and with myself, I know I had a huge big old English pram that my mother had inherited from Brigadier Miles. You know those great big regal prams that had come out from England. I found that her children did not go outside at an early age, as my children did. We used to put them outside in a pram with a protective netting over them for so many hours a day to get fresh air and sun and what have you and in fact we used to walk with them in a pram much earlier…(Jacqui, 74)525

Sonya recalls that her babies all followed the Plunket suggestion of spending time outside:

She was the kind of baby that was… had a beautiful tanned skin because I used to giver her a kick in the sun like the Plunket book said. Even with my fourth child, which I had in Dunedin, I had my boy in

524 _{R. Gordon, "The Role of La Leche League in the Promotion and Support of Breastfeeding,"}

Breastfeeding in New Zealand: Practice, Problems and Policy, eds. A. Beasley and A. Trlin (Palmerston North: The Dunmore Printing Company, 1998).; McBride-Henry, "Responding to the Call to Care: Women's Experience of Breastfeeding in New Zealand."; K.M. Ryan and V.M. Grace, "Medicalization and Women's Knowledge: The Construction of Understandings of Infant Feedng Experiences in Post-Ww Ii New Zealand," Health Care for Women International 22 (2001).

525 _{Interview with Jacqui, 25 November 2004, paragraph 72.}

Vignette 16 Sonya (72)

Although a New Zealander, Sonya was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1932. Her family returned to New Zealand when Sonya was two and settled firstly in South Otago and then the Wairarapa. She attended Teachers training college in Wellington and married her Dutch husband in 1955. They have four children and currently live in Northland. Sonya is Lisa’s mother.

…when I had my first baby I was just so over the moon. I was, I was just…nothing

prepared me for the delight of my children, nothing. Nothing prepared me for the great joy of being a mother. I had no idea it was going to be so good…

Dunedin…but I still had him lying in the pram outside in the fresh air all day as much as I could in the Dunedin climate, so all my children were very fresh air babies. (Sonya, 72)526

One of the more common treatments at the time for wind was ½ teaspoon of magnesia in 1-2 teaspoons of warm boiled water before feeds.527 Caitlyn

remembers trying a number of different things to help settle her baby with colic:

…she would scream from about three or four o’clock in the afternoon till about nine o’clock at night. I mean you ate dinner with her lying on her tummy across your knees, patting her. I’m putting my hand up and down on my lap on an imaginary baby’s back. She was absolutely terrible. There was milk of

magnesia you could try, there was... I’m trying to remember the name of it, it was actually made from Belladonna, that was the basic ingredient. I imagine it was a muscle relaxant. If you check with the chemist you would probably find the name of what that was. I don’t think that helped a lot either. (Caitlyn, 64)528

For nappy rash, gentian violet 1% and a dusting of Sharlands Dusting Powder each time nappy was changed was the preferred treatment with the

recommendation that nappies be washed with Barilla soap.529

In the 1951 Plunket book, the Society published an abridged version of the Aims and Objectives of the Society with a further call to mothers to assist the Society by becoming an Annual Subscriber.530 Although the Books had been calling for annual subscribers since 1938, this is the first time that a marketing pitch had been employed. Alice – a Plunket nurse interviewed for this study – remembers that the donation to the Society was always sitting with the book:

And of course in the early days it sat with the money. You go into the house and the changing mat or something would be out and the napkin and the Plunket book would be with the donation. I can’t remember because by the time I came on the

526 _{Interview with Sonya, 21 April 2004, paragraph 17.} 527 _{Plunket book PBLS1, 1949}

528 _{Interview with Caitlyn, 19 October 2004, paragraph 43} 529 _{Plunket book PBLS1, 1949}

scene they weren’t charging as such. But in the early days there was always a charge of two and six or something a visit. And that was always sitting on the Plunket book. But then in the latter years you weren’t asking for a donation, but mum probably said “you’ve got to give a donation”, so it would sit on the