Labor and Delivery
My first idea about how to do the labor involved in the birth of a child came the summer of 1946 when I was working as a nurses’ aide in the Labor and Delivery Department at Iowa Lutheran Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. It was my summer job between my freshman and sophomore years of college.
What I learned that summer was that the women who screamed and yelled during labor had very long labors, and the women who didn’t scream or yell had very short labors. Therefore, right or wrong, I decided not to scream when I was in labor.
When I was finally pregnant with Kim, I was lucky to have classes in Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) at Midway Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. We were taught at the first sign of a uterine contraction, how to take a deep belly breath and slowly let it out as the contraction decreased. Then during the time between contractions we were taught how to get our bodies relaxed by squeezing muscles in our feet and legs for two or three minutes seconds and then gradually relaxing them; then arms; then facial muscles. Of course as labor progressed and contractions got closer and closer together, it was hard to get totally relaxed. This method really worked for me. I required no pain medication for either of my deliveries. I did have the anesthesia they used in the fifties for the actual delivery, for "Twilight Sleep." The labor for Kim was four hours long, and the labor for Carl was five hours long. How much of these easy labors was just plain luck and how much were due to PMR, I do not know. But I tend to think it was PMR. By the way, in 1955 husbands were not involved in labor and delivery at all. They had to just sit in the waiting room and wait.
