I was raised in the
Methodist Church but became Catholic when I got married because there was no
way my husband was going to change churches. This fall it will be 58 years that
we’ve been married. Although a Catholic, I feel that in some ways I’m also
still a Methodist. I started my periods fairly late—at fourteen, I think—and I
was always irregular. My husband and I went together for two years before we were married. We were
sexually active, but for some reason I didn’t get pregnant. When I got married at nineteen, I was
disappointed not to become pregnant immediately. We were anxious to start a
family. It took three months for me to get pregnant with the first. Then they
came quickly, one two, three, four. The third baby was
only 13 months old when the fourth was born. She didn’t get to be the baby for
long, poor thing.
After my last baby, I was
depressed for six months. I couldn’t look at my husband without bursting into
tears. Years later, I found that my good friend, also the mother of four,
also Catholic, was going through the same low spirits I was. If we’d only known
at the time, we said later. We could have talked to each other. As it was, I
felt very alone—as did she.
When the baby was 13 months
old, I feared I was pregnant again. I went to a doctor in town and told him I
couldn’t have a fourth child, just couldn’t. He gave me five little pills, and
if it was a pregnancy it went away, and I was relieved although I felt bad
about it, too. But I don’t regret it. I could not have coped with another baby.
After that, I had an IUD put in. That led to an infection that put me in bed for three
days. Another doctor discovered the infection. He
said the IUD hadn’t been inserted properly and asked if I wanted to him to put
in another one. I said absolutely not.
I tried Catholic roulette
for awhile, taking my temperature and using strips to test for fertility. Then my good friend, at the advice of her sister who was big in Planned Parenthood, went on
the Pill and I did too. I stayed on the Pill for 12 years. It was high dose in
those years. My mother, who of course wasn’t even Catholic, said, “Aren’t you
afraid of getting cancer?” To me, getting pregnant, having another baby, would
be a worse fate. I was better off trying my luck with the Pill.
When I was in a nursing
program, working very hard between home and school, I had an episode of rectal
bleeding. I’m lucky the bleeding didn’t occur in my head. My blood pressure, it
turned out, was sky high, the result of the Pill and the cause of the bleeding. A Catholic doctor with many children at home, told me to go off the
Pill but didn’t prescribe any other form of birth control. Another doctor
offered to put an IUD in. I said no to that!
My good friend had had her tubes
tied. And I decided to do the same. My cousin and I went into the hospital at
the same time to have the procedure done. It was a hard time. My husband thought
it a shameful business and didn’t want me to tell people why I was going into
the hospital—certainly not the children or his parents. He was good with
the kids, and he would have been content to have many more, although I was the
one who took the most care of them. He helped out. He was very patient with
them, more so than I. When our youngest started school I went to work at the
telephone company. It was split shift which suited me fine. I worked in the mornings
and again in the evenings, 6 to 10. I’d have supper all ready when my husband got
home in the evening, then I’d go off and he’d get the kids ready for bed. He
didn’t mind. A farmer always can use the money; so he was glad to have me go
off to work.
I felt almost dirty about
having my tubes tied and very much alone. I resented my husband for that. But we
got by it. We got by it, and we have a good life together today.
I don’t know how the older
generation managed. My own mother’s four children were spaced, but I don’t know
how she did it. Younger women go on the Pill. The doses now are much lower. We
had one of our daughters go on the pill as a teenager because she had such pain
every month. She’d be right in bed, sick to her stomach. I’d have to give her suppositories.
Our younger daughter we put on the Pill as a teenager also because she was
sexually active.
