Open Writing

Auntie Mabel’s voice came echoing back, loud and clear, a few weeks ago, when our latest grandchild was born. I’d come back to Canada from Chile earlier than usual - suffering the bleak Toronto winter to be on hand.
So, there I was, when the proud parents brought their new son home from the maternity facility, attached to the big hospital on Toronto’s University Avenue - home to some of the best of Canada’s health institutions.
Except, this baby wasn’t a ten-day, white-shawled cocoon in a carrycot, but a little boy in a grey hat and sleeping suit, sitting in a car seat. He was just five hours old. As I helped the weary parents and their precious load in through the door, I heard Auntie Mabel.
“Whatever’s this? Where’s his pram? A car seat! He’s only just been born. What’s he doing coming home sitting up? He should be in a nursery, he should.” I felt Auntie Mabel’s small figure bristle beside me, stare up at the new mum and declare, “And you, should be in bed!”
Nigel was a lovely little thing, weighing in at 7lbs 8ozs, but 3 weeks early.
A couple of days later, his skin was decidedly yellow. Two midwives arrived to have a look. When they peeled off their thick parkas, scarves (it was minus 10 outside) and boots to reveal blue jeans and T-shirts, and started hunting for their equipment in a backpack, Auntie Mabel’s voice rang through again.
“They don’t look like nurses to me. Where are their uniforms? They should be wearing hats and capes. Where’s the black bag? Call them midwives?”
Thirty five years earlier, Auntie Mabel had stood on the pavement holding up the father of this tiny newborn so he could blow kisses at me - his mum - incarcerated for 10 days on the second floor of the Princess Margaret Maternity Hospital on Greenhead Rd. Huddersfield. The baby was a breech, so I didn’t see him for 24 hours … never mind dress him up or take him home. His father had already left to start a job in Canada.
Visiting hours were strict - one hour afternoon and evening - immediate family - no children. While my mum joined the other husbands, boyfriends and mothers who filed reverentially into the long ward under Sister Chicken’s gimlet eye, Auntie Mabel and a toddler had stood waving from the street below.
But the long days in the quiet order of the home were restful - the last of their kind most of us would have for years. Each time the visitors left, we new mums lay relaxing in the narrow beds, waiting for tea or supper to be served, joking with the nurses and listening to the radio and Bonnie and Clyde being played over and over. Our babies were wheeled in for feeding and then whisked away so we could sleep.
Now, after just four days, Nigel had to return to the big hospital. This time his Mum was able to stay in a special courtesy room while he had sunlamp treatment and drip medication. You could visit any time, but there were no friendly ward mates, motherly nursing sisters or nice meals on trays. This hospital was a bustling, serve yourself, do-it yourself place.
I like to think I keep up to date with modern trends, and am appreciative of modern medicine, but as the years pass, I sympathise more and more with Auntie Mabel
“Eeh, I don’t know Susan, and they call it progress.”