“Sterile Technique” by Louella Washburn

This was one of the early Latter-day Saint birth stories I collected for the book. These two women, Maggie Ellen Black Rowley and her friend Louella Washburn, were some of my favorite midwives to study about. They were life long friends and worked as midwives together. When I first read their stories two years ago I wondered how in the world women could just go about life and ignore that they were in the advanced stages of labor. Yet, after the birth of my last little boy, who came only a half hour after I finally admitted I was in labor, I better understand their stories. Sometimes the best labor coping technique is denial! 

Maggie Ellen Black Rowley and her friend Louella Washburn studied together under Dr. Shipp, an early LDS woman doctor, and worked together as midwives in the LDS community for many years. Maggie once recounted how when she was in labor with her tenth child a young boy came to her door and asked if she would come attend his stepmother who was having a hard labor. Maggie tried to explain to the boy that she couldn’t come because she was in labor herself. After listening to the boy’s continued cries she finally went with him to his stepmother’s house. She found the woman was in the final stages of labor and saw that she was having a hard time because the baby was in the wrong position. Maggie was able to turn the baby into a good position and the woman delivered a healthy baby girl soon after. Maggie dressed the baby and got the mother comfortable until a relative was able to come look over her. Only then did Maggie walk home where almost immediately upon her arrival she gave birth to her own daughter!

On Maggie’s 90^th birthday the two friends also reminisced about how thoroughly they had been drilled on “sterile technique” (which was a new procedure at the time) and how Dr. Shipp had drilled into them the importance of using a new bar of soap, rather than one that had been partially used. Then they joyfully recalled how, when they were both expecting at about the same time, they had agreed to take care of one another and promised they would outdo each other on the “sterile technique”.

Louella’s baby came three weeks early when her husband was away. When she got out of bed that morning and felt her first contraction she immediately remembered everything that that needed to be done before the baby arrived. She had to get the house ready for winter– the organ needed to be moved from in front of the fireplace, the front room needed to be cleaned, and she needed to move the stove into the bedroom so that it would be warm enough in there for the baby. She worked as quickly as her cumbersome form would allow. She got the front room cleaned but as she started to blacken and polish the stove and set it in place her pains began increasing in severity. She sent her father to go fetch Maggie and while she was connecting the final section of the stovepipe and giving it a shove into the chimney, a crowning contraction stopped her in her tacks and her mother had to practically drag her to her bed. Maggie just barely arrived in time to catch the baby but poor Louella was covered with soot from head to heels. The two friends laughed about what Dr. Shipp would have thought about their way of practicing sterile technique!

From: Dorigatti, Barbara T. Thompson. 2009. Pioneer Midwives. (pg. 15, 17-18) Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Lesson for September