Chapter 4

MOTHERCRAFT NURSING

I was excited about going to Berry Street Foundling Home. This would be the first time I had lived away from home and my whole life stretched ahead of me, full of promise. My uniforms had been ordered and bought – dark blue dresses with white collar and cuffs, white starched caps and a red cape. I had tried them all on and felt very smart. Mum and I had been interviewed by the matron who, like many hospital matrons, seemed a bit of a dragon but I was sure I could cope with anything life threw at me.

Berry Street was a home for unmarried mothers. The girls – some as young as 14 and nearly all country girls - came there during their pregnancy, were sent to the Women’s Hospital for a day or two for the actual birth, then had to remain at Berry Street until the baby was 3 months old because part of our training was the management of breast-feeding. When a girl left Berry Street, she very rarely took her baby with her and it was put up for adoption but if the mother thought that she might be able to support the child later (for example if she got a job or perhaps married the father of the child and he agreed to support it) she could defer signing it over for adoption. This meant that when the babies were at their most `adoptable’ stage (ie newborn) many of them were not available. By the time the mother had given up hope of ever taking the baby home and it was signed over, it was a toddler and had been spoiled by institutional life so would often be returned as unmanageable, unlovable or for some other reason.

What a rude shock it all turned out to be. For one thing I who had had my own room since I was born had to share a room with three other trainees, not even cubicles, just a room with four beds in it. I don’t think I slept a wink that first night. Then the hours we had to work – ten hours a day, six days a week, ten shillings a week pay, never a moment to sit down. Very often they would be split shifts – from 6am to 10am and then 4pm to 10pm which meant that we were off duty in the middle of the day but it made the day very long. We had only one day off a week and Mum would usually come and pick me up in the car and take me home for a sleep in my quiet peaceful little bedroom – a great treat!

I started in the Toddlers’ Wing, looking after about 30 children from 18 months to 4 years old. One of the first children I saw when I went on duty that first day was Lesley who had been born with no arms and no legs. Perhaps an early thalidomide baby or perhaps there was some other cause – but not surprisingly her parents were horrified and never even took her home from hospital so she was sent to Berry Street and as far as I know they never visited her either. By the time I knew her Lesley was four. She had two prosthetic leather stumps with metal bars for legs and round metal discs in place of feet, which were strapped on to her hips and a walking frame which supported her under her armpits, and by swinging the stumps so that they hit the floor and propelled her forwards, she could move along. On one shoulder she had a little stump with a finger or thumb on it and she could hold a cup or a spoon with that – in fact she was amazing in her ability to learn independent living skills. She sometimes had terrible tantrums, not surprisingly as her intelligence was normal and life must have been horribly frustrating for her.

Then there was Big Robert who had some rare blood disease and was covered in blotches like big bruises; he was also four and not expected to live much longer. He was called Big Robert to distinguish him from Little Robert who was half aboriginal and therefore not adoptable either. There was Ronnie (holding my left hand in the photo) whom I now realise was autistic. He was nearly four, could not talk and was not toilet trained. He had to sleep in a room by himself because some nights he was awake all night rocking his cot which he could move from one side of the room to the other by his strenuous rocking. He would be put in his cot for a rest after lunch, as all the children were, and he would often amuse himself by defecating and smearing the product on everything – cot, walls, himself, bedclothes – and it would fall to the lot of the nurse on duty to clean it all – and Ronnie – up. When he turned four, he was sent to Kew, the hospital for the insane. So many sad cases ... and I had never seen a disabled child in my life … it was all a great shock to me but I did get used to it and didn’t mind the work and loved the children.

After lunch all the toddlers had to have a rest on their beds while we did special cleaning, laundry and other tasks if we were working 6am – 4pm, then we would take the toddlers for a walk in the park opposite which was the parkland surrounding the Melbourne Cricket Ground. That was always fun for them and for us too. If we had enough staff, we would take Lesley as well in a pusher and any others who could not walk. When we came back, they would all be returned to the playroom. I realise now that some of them could have benefited from kindergarten activities but I have no memory of anything like that being offered.

Eventually I had served my 3 months in the Toddlers’ Wing and went to the main building where the mothers and babies were. Sleeping conditions were much better as we actually each had a little cubicle with curtains between so a bit of privacy at least. The babies were a whole new experience for me, I had never had anything to do with newborns. Although the mothers were still there until the babies were three months old, the mothers were not allowed to see them except at feeding time. Then we would change the babies, take them to the mothers in the Mothers’ Lounge, help them with the feeding if they needed help, then take the babies back to the nursery where they were looked after exclusively by staff. I don’t know how the mothers felt about that but not surprisingly there wasn’t a great deal of bonding and most of them left after the three months never to return even to visit. I only ever remember one mother taking her baby with her when she left.

The job wasn’t only caring for the babies, there was also a great deal of cleaning to be done every day and one morning when pouring Lysol into a bucket of water it splashed up and hit me in both eyes. I got little sympathy and was told off for not pouring more carefully but I was sent to the Alfred Hospital Emergency where my eyes were washed out and I got the rest of the day off but it certainly wasn’t worth the pain. Another day several of us went to the beach during the middle of the day when we were working a split shift. It was a real scorcher and my fair skin was burned to a crisp. The next morning, I couldn’t even bend my legs let alone walk and spent the day in bed but the telling off I got for that was worse than the sunburn.

Then there was Stool Parade which was held every morning at 10 o’clock. All staff had to attend. All the dirty nappies from the previous 24 hours had to be carefully folded and labelled and kept in a special bin and at Stool Parade each one was opened with tongs by the sister on duty and the contents commented on and questions would be asked of the probationers as to size, colour, consistency, abnormalities etc. The variety was always amazing.

I made a good friend, Jill Cannon, who remained a dear friend ever since but who sadly has now died after spending the last few years of her life in a nursing home with dementia. She had already finished her training and was a Staff Nurse so she wore a yellow uniform instead of blue and she was very kind to me. She sometimes took me home to her house in Toorak for days off or to her stepfather’s beach house in Flinders. Her mother Dolly, a delightful person, was a journalist. She used to bring us breakfast in bed which I can still remember – cereal with fruit on it and whipped cream, an omelette with a big dab of melting butter on the top. For the next couple of years, Jill and I went out with two medical students who were friends so there were lots of `foursomes’. We often borrowed each other’s clothes and I was always amazed that she would want to borrow clothes from me as her stepfather owned Parker Shoes and was a director of Georges, a posh and expensive department store in Collins Street in Melbourne, and many of Jill’s clothes came from there – and mine certainly didn’t!

After I had been at Berry Street for about six months my turn for night duty came. Trainees had to do six weeks of night duty without a night off, and then we were given six days off. Night duty was always very busy because we bathed all the babies at night. It was probably a good thing that we were busy because I’m sure if I had ever sat down for more than a few minutes I would have fallen asleep. I had great difficulty sleeping in the daytime; we had to share rooms with another night duty nurse so it was never really quiet and it was midsummer so always hot and bright.

Because I was the most junior nurse on night duty, one of my jobs was to go down to the kitchen and heat up the day’s leftover dinners for the three night-staff. The kitchen was far away from the wards and East Melbourne in those days was a fairly unsavoury area. Every night I dreaded my trip to the kitchen – there were no blinds on the windows and I always imagined faces outside looking in at me. One night while I was in the kitchen the power went off so I was in pitch darkness, thinking that somebody had turned the power off and was now creeping towards me. Talk about petrified with fear. Eventually I plucked up enough courage to grope my way back to the wards where I found that it was just a power failure and after about twenty minutes it came on again but I have never forgotten how scared I was.

At the end of the six weeks, I went home for my break and told my mother that I had decided nursing just wasn’t for me. On reflection I realise how many good skills I learned at Berry Street which stood me in good stead later on when we had our own children but at the time I just couldn’t cope with the conditions. I suppose Mum was disappointed in me but she didn’t show it, just drove me in to pick up my gear and said `That’s fine dear, just as long as you find another job tomorrow.’ Which I did.