By Rhonda Bartle

A Prayer for all seasons

The midwife's prayer begins:

Of all thy gifts, God, give to me
Courage, tact and sympathy,
Cheerfulness, a ready hand,
A warm, true heart to understand,
A little of the agony
And suffering that has to be

Perhaps Marion Squire, a young woman hell-bent on a career of birthing babies, was granted all these things in the course of her career.

Yet, at 96, as the midwife looks back on a full, useful life, she explains how it was mainly bad fortune followed by a little good luck that got her started. 

It could have been the death of her mother from childbed fever that prompted her to help other women during and after delivery, or it could have been something she was born with.

But when her mother died in 1920, it fell to Marion's father, a hardworking Bell Block farmer, to care for his small children as well as a newborn babe. He had little choice but to find someone else to take them in. 

"Granny Tregurtha looked after us all for a few months," a sprightly nonagenarian says across her sunny kitchen table, while her window offers glimpses of Ngamotu Beach and port.

Her house, which she designed and had built long ago, sits on part of her father's last-owned property.

"Afterwards, the family was split up. The others went to Dad's parents and sisters, and I lived with Granny for a few more years, till we all got together again."

A new chapter

Fortunately, the separation from her siblings lasted only four years. When her father settled on a farm on Carrington Rd, New Plymouth, Marion left school at 14 to keep house and look after the family.

When she was 19, her father remarried, and she was sent to nurse her ill grandmother.

Marion says this was the first time she began to wonder about being a nurse. But bad luck -  and subsequent bad advice -  intervened.

"When I was 21 I lost an eye. I whacked a gorse bush and it flew up and got me, the eye became infected and there was no penicillion in those days, of course.

"When I went to see the matron about going nursing, she said I'd never be able to be a nurse with just one eye."

Marion spent the next few years housekeeping at various addresses until fate decided to smile.

"At my last job in Hāwera, Miss Small, who was the Red Cross home visitor, said 'Why don't you come down to Red Cross Home Nursing Classes in the evenings?' so I did.

"When she asked why I didn't go nursing, I told her what the matron had said. Her response to that was 'Rubbish!' She told me to go see the Hāwera matron."

Three months after making that appointment Marion started general training. After qualifying in 1939, she added maternity, midwifery and Plunket training to her skills. 

As well as becoming a Taranaki midwife that patients remembered and loved, she would also one day do a tour of duty as Domiciliary Midwife in post-war Britain, and become a relief Plunket nurse when she retired.

A journey with a clear end
Marion's training took her to Whakatane, back to Hāwera, to Te Kopuru (Dargaville) and then St Helens in Auckland. She knew being a midwife was what she wanted to do.

"I was in charge of the children's ward for a while and I decided I'd like to do midwifery. The matron didn't understand it. She didn't like the maternity ward at all!"

The day she began attending women in labour marked the beginning of a long love affair with babies. Eventually, in 1946, opportunity knocked closer to home. The new Inglewood Maternity Hospital, just three years old, was looking for a Sister-in-Charge. 

"I always wanted to come back to Taranaki. My family lived down here and this was a chance to be in charge of a maternity hospital, which I'd always wanted. I loved it. I spent a very happy 20 years there."

Unlike British midwives, who keep a register of babies born, Marion has no idea how many babies she delivered during her time as Sister Squire.

"Oh, thousands," she says.  An old joke still exists, that in her two decades of working there, she replaced the entire population of Inglewood.

Asked why she so enjoyed the job, she leans back in her chair, trying hard to explain. "I don't know why, but from the time when I first got into maternity work I felt I must have been made for it.

"A doctor once told me I had 'midwife hands.'  They're not very big, but I guess they're pretty useful."

In touch with staff and patients

Under Sister Squire's management and care, Inglewood Maternity Hospital must have seemed a special place where the wards often smelled of citrus and sugar. During quiet times, staff made great batches of marmalade for their patients' breakfast toast.

Marion reveals the smallest baby she delivered weighed a mere 65 grams, and the biggest a whopping five kilos.  "Yes, he was big. When we laid him on the bench he waved his arms and we had to take everything off!"

But that big boy and his father came to see her just a year ago. "He's still a big fellow. And he must be 50 years old or more now!"

Back in those earliest days, conditions were quite different to what they are now. No such thing as a birthing pool or squatting on the floor during labour.  Women were delivered on their sides for an 'ordinary' delivery or on their backs for an 'instrumental'.

Pain relief came from the Gas and Air machine, or pethidine injections, which Marion says were effective if you exactly when and how to use them.

 "Yes, much has changed. In those days, mothers stayed in hospital for a fortnight after giving birth. They were farm women. They went home to work. There was no one there for them except other children.

"These days you can go in at 8.30am and be home by 12 noon. I think that's a disadvantage."

In the Inglewood Maternity Hospital, safety was paramount -  and they lost just two patients in 20 years. But as Marion says, "The biggest change came after my mother died in 1920 -  that was the year of the highest maternal death rate in New Zealand history." 

It was during that year that childbed fever claimed more fit women than ever before, and safer medical practices were implemented to ensure it would never happen again.

Working abroad

While working in England, Marion was able to compare the difference between practices here and overseas. 

"People's attitudes were different," she says. "It was all home births there. A nurse walked in and took the house over, whereas here, at the time, people would have looked at you! 

"I finished up at Watford, North London, which had been rebuilt after the War. Thirty thousand people were expected to live there. We used to bike out there.

"Imagine, going from here to Tarata on a bike. But we were only a few minutes away from the Flying Squad (maternity ambulance). Any trouble, and there they were."

She recalls one humorous moment, of pedalling around a corner to hear kids on the street yelling gleefully, "You're too late, Nurse, you're too late!"  And of course, she was.

And once, she opened a door to find a woman in a nightdress, holding the hem of it in her hands, with something heavy inside.

"She'd had her baby in the toilet! She said, 'I pulled it out. I couldn't leave the poor little thing in there!' The family was busy running round looking for scissors to cut the cord, without giving any thought to clamping it. It was lucky I was there."

A reluctant retirement

Though the Inglewood Maternity became her life, in 1967, Marion was appalled to read in Taranaki Herald that their hospital was about to close. 

The Taranaki Hospital Board had decided to shut both Inglewood and Opunake maternity hospitals so all future deliveries would be at New Plymouth Base Hospital.

Though a meeting was quickly organised to strongly protest the changes, it was a sad little notice that appeared in the Inglewood Courier.

VALE
In loving memory of the Inglewood Maternity Hospital. Passed away as a result of amalgamationitis, a form of bureaucratic poisoning, October 1967, after a lingering illness. Fondly remembered by hundreds of mothers and the Inglewood Action Group.
No flowers by request

The hospital where Marion had seen so many babies born safely and well, closed its doors for ever. Marion, of course, was late to her own farewell, too busy delivering the last baby to leave.

Today the building houses the Marinoto Home for the Elderly, and the irony is, some of the patients are likely women who delivered their babies there.

A reluctant retirement

If Marion has any tips for busy nurses, it's advice on retirement. "Get something to do!"  It can be a traumatic time for people who have seen active, working lives.

"I went from being someone in charge of even a small hospital, from being in a position of responsibility, to keeping house again for my father whose second wife had died. It was as though I became nothing. I couldn't even change the furniture around."

She's adamant that Plunket help preserve her sanity. "I relieved a Miss Herbert for about 14 months, and then I relieved during staff holidays. I think that saved me."

Now, as she nears 100, she still has babies in mind, as she picks up her knitting.  She won't say how many woollen singlets she's made over the years for neo-natal babies, or for the fund-raising tables.

As with the babies she delivered, she didn't bother to count. Chances are, she could knit them in her sleep.

"It's relaxing," she says. "And I don't get niggly when I'm knitting. I do get niggly when I've got nothing to do. It's quite healthy from my way of thinking."

Too busy in her former life to have babies of her own, she can smile at the irony. Fortunately, she was able to take in a small boy of eight who needed a home, who became her child.

And the highlight of her career?  The words come very easily. "You felt you were doing something worthwhile and people were happy with what you were doing. A very satisfying sort of job. A bit of responsibility, all right, but I didn't mind. I like being responsible." 

A pair of hands put to good use.