The following is an interview with my grandmother Rita Zenner. I asked her questions pertaining to my Women in U.S. Society class regarding issues of role construction, family, culture, and careers of women, as well as discrimination in the work place. She is 75 years old and graduated from a nursing program out of Breckenridge, Minnesota. She is the mother of 7 and the grandmother of 14 and I love her.
Ashley: Okay, so you said you graduated in 1955? Is that right?
Grandma: Yes
Ashley: And you worked for 2 years after that?
Grandma: Well it wasn’t quite two years, it was one year; and then we were married and I got pregnant right away with your dad. And when I just started to show at about 6 months, they asked me to quit.
Ashley: Oh really!?
Grandma: Yeah, so I don’t know if that is a sort of discrimination?
Ashley: Oh yeah definitely! And so did you quit?
Grandma: Yeah.
Ashley: And then once he was born did you go back to work at the same hospital?
Grandma: No, no I didn’t work then until after your biological grandpa, grandpa Roots died, I went back part time just to be able to get out someplace, you know..
Grandma: so then after I remarried I was home for 13 years, but then when I went back to work I worked for 25 years.
Ashley: did you have all your kids in a hospital?
Grandma: Yes
Ashley: All in the same hospital?
Grandma: No, the first three in a little community hospital in Little Falls, and the other four were born in the cities.
Grandma: and if I had to compare the two hospitals, I would say that little one was more comfortable. But of course I used to work there so I knew most of the staff. So maybe that had something to do with it.
Ashley: How small was it?
Grandma: it maybe had like 100 beds.
Ashley: Did you give vaginal birth to all the kids or were any born via caesarian?
Grandma: No all vaginal. No caesarian. Did you know the story about your dad?
Ashley: No I don’t think so…
Grandma: I almost died!
Ashley: What! On your first child!
Grandma: yeah talk about crazy!
Ashley: No I don’t know. What happened??
Grandma: I was in labor for over 20 hours, a very long time, maybe longer than that, from the evening before, from Thursday morning or Wednesday night to Friday night. So finally he was born and I was so hungry! So I was looking forward to getting something to eat.
Ashley: Because you probably hadn’t eaten that whole time.
Grandma: Yeah I hadn’t eaten that whole time and I don’t think we got to drink back then either. And I was feeling fine, So here comes this tray and they plop it on this table and take the lid off, and I look at this food and I go ** makes vomiting face***
Ashley: Oh no!
Grandma: and I tore our all my stitches. The nurse had gone out of the room already, and I remember sitting in this warm puddle, but that’s it. I don’t remember when they came back. But I ended up with like 13 units of blood and I came too the Sunday morning after that.
Ashley: Oh man! That’s intense!
Grandma: Oh yeah, and all the nunnies were like “oh we were praying for you!”
Ashley: Oh man. Wow that’s scary. Did that make you kind of afraid to have another kid?
Grandma: no not really, you know most delivers are safe and I guess I knew that from my training in the OB. So wouldn’t ya know.. Then 11 months later here comes uncle Patrick.
Ashley: So were any of the other kids deliveries as hard?
Grandma: well you know, Mark’s was actually kind of hard.
Ashley: the middle one?
Grandma: yeah, you know the other interesting thing, I don’t’ know if you need to know this. But you know babies are supposed to be born with the top of the headfirst and it’s supposed to be easier. But the boys came face first, so that made for a really hard delivery, and you didn’t get bearing down pains you just had pain and not the urge to push. So anyway, I was not able to deliver mark, so the anesthesiologist was there and he didn’t say anything he just slapped this mask on my face. And that was kind of a scary thing.
Ashley: He didn’t tell you what was going on at all? He just put this mask on you?
Grandma: yeah, and I didn’t think I was acting irrational or anything and I had this sensation that I was going down in this black tunnel.
Ashley: that sounds really scary!!!
Grandma: Yeah, I can remember that, I don’t know if it was the drugs or the gas or what.
Ashley: So then were they using forceps to get him out??
Grandma: yeah I imagine so
Ashley: But none of the girls were as difficult as that?
Grandma: Oh no! The girls were like spitting seeds. They were easy.
Ashley: haha! Can you think of any other times you felt discriminated against being a woman in the medical system or maybe just as being a nurse? Well doctors were mostly men at the time right? So were there many male nurses?
Grandma: Yeah there were a few male nurses, but it was more of the exception and not the rule. But discrimination, no not really as a nurse, probably heard remarks about the size of my family.
Ashley: oh really??
Grandma: mmhmm
Ashley: was it bad to have a large family? I thought it was good to have a large family?
Grandma: Well, we were polluting the world, we were responsible for overpopulating the earth. . Those were the comments.
Ashley: Really?? From who? Just from other nurses or people in general?
Grandma: no from doctors actually.
Ashley. Hmm that’s odd. I feel like that’s really weird.
Grandma: Well they were younger and this was the 70s. And they were fresh out of medical school.
Ashley: That’s too bad you had to deal with that
Grandma: but no as far as my nursing I didn’t feel any kind of discrimination. The people I worked with were always very kind. Well and maybe this has something to do with this too.. After my long stretch of nursing I was working with people with cancer and HIV, and they have a whole different mindset of priorities in life, and are much more appreciative of what people do for them.
Ashley: How long were you working with them?
Grandma: 18 years first of all with the cancer people, and the rest of the time with HIV patients. So maybe that had something to do with it. I’m thinking, sometimes one of the visitors of the patients in the surgical ward would ask for a glass of water or something and instead of the relative getting it, they would say oh well let the nurse get it that’s her job.
Ashley: So they’d make you do little things like that.
Grandma: Yeah but that’s wasn’t all the time.
Ashley: Did you have any friends of do you know of anyone else in our family that gave birth with a midwife instead of going to the hospital? Because I guess what we were talking about in our class is that America is sort of an exception because most of the people in the world use midwifes and it’s strange to go to the hospital and unheard of.
Grandma: Well that just came to be like with my mothers generation. I was born at home, and my grandma was a midwife. Your great grandma Opatz. She delivered me and she delivered Silvia. But when grandma was pregnant with the twins she went to the hospital. But everybody did the midwife thing before that pretty much.
Ashley: yeah
Grandma: So probably since the 30s or 40s.
Ashley: Do you think it’s dangerous? What’s your opinion on using midwives?
Grandma: I don’t think so.. Sometimes I think going to the hospital is like an easy way out. I don’t know I don’t know.
Ashley: haha yeah I’m not really sure how I feel about it either.
Grandma: Yeah well I don’t think the midwives have the drugs and all the stuff you can get in the hospital.
Ashley: We watched a video about this in class called, "The Business of Being Born," that followed a midwife around as she was helping three couples give birth, and they would always have an emergency back up appointment at the hospital in case something went wrong, but she was trained as a nurse and knew how to deal with many of the situations. But I guess its much cheaper to use a midwife as opposed to give birth in the hospital and they are with you months ahead of time helping you get ready for the birth and talking you through it, whereas in the hospital it seems like the doctor is just there right when its time and sort of disappears afterwards.
Grandma: Well you have prenatal visits with the doctor before hand, but the olden day midwives kind of stepped in. I don’t think there was much preparation before hand they just stepped in when needed.
Ashley: interesting
Grandma: I think its safe; I mean birth after all is a natural thing. Unless something happens and you hemorrhage or the cord gets wrapped around the babies neck. But I think a midwife is just as skilled to pick up the signs of trouble as a nurse in the delivery room and knows how to deal with them.
Ashley: yeah, I don’t know, I guess there’s the argument that doctors in the hospital are more apt to give women caesarian sections because they don’t want to wait around for them to be in labor for hours, and the caesarian will get it done quick and open up the space in the hospital. But we were talking in class about how doctors give you Pitocin which is supposed to induce labor but if you get an epidural that will counter act it, so you are sort of stuck and not feeling the need to push. But I think a caesarian is bad because your essentially getting cut through your abdominal muscles, which takes a long time to heal and can be very painful.
Grandma: hmm that’s interesting. And you can only get c-sections so many times until you can’t cut there anymore. So I guess that could be considered a form of birth control then. Haha. But your aunt Jackie had two caesarians on your cousins Tom and David. And it took her a little while to recover from those.
Our conversation seemed to focus most on her career as a nurse and if she ever experienced any discimination in or out of the work place. I didn’t realize that there were such hostile comments directed at my grandma for the size of her family. I was under the impression up until now that having a large family was considered a good thing. I think it just goes to show that each decade held a different set of morals and ideas as to what was good for society.
I was very interested in her opinion on midwives since she had all 7 of her children in the hospital but she and all her brothers and sisters were born in the home. It’s a very intreging generational change, it now seems like midwives are almost now thought of as a “trendy” alternative to childbirth, whereas they were the only option back in the 20s and 30s, and now childbirth in the hospital is in some ways looked upon as being “the easy way out,” as my grandma put it. I’m still very torn as to what method of childbirth I would choose for myself, but I now know the experiences of a certified nurse that worked for 25 years and had 7 children in the medical system and lived to tell about it.
This interview gave me the chance to sit down and talk to my grandma one on one, and ask her questions about herself that I never thought I would have gotten around to asking on my own. I love my grandma and I’m glad that I got to hang out with her and get to know her a little over this Thanksgiving weekend without all my other relatives around.
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