Questions of birth 2

An earlier post asked three questions about the births of Grandma Malinda’s children (see here):

• Where did Grandma Malinda give birth?


• Who assisted with these births?


• What did the older children do when it was time for a new birth?

Dad (Carl) has kindly provided further information about these matters.

First, all eight children were born at home, although there is a minor question about which home was the setting for the first child born: Grandma and Grandpa’s house or the home of one of their parents. All the other children were born at Grandma and Grandpa’s home.

Second, it appears that all the births were assisted only by a midwife. Dad explains that, with Ruth, the actual birth was assisted by a midwife, although Dr. Carr later made a house call to ensure that mother and child were doing well.

Low German has several terms for “midwife”: Häwaum (variants Häbaum and Häbame), Weemutta, and Popkjemutta. However, none of those seems to be the term used in the Buller household. The first is clearly related to High German Hebamme (an Amme is a nurse), but the precise term used within our family remains unknown for now.

The midwives who assisted Grandma included, I am told, Daniel’s future mother-in-law Katharina Rempel, Lena Regier, and Hope Dischau (?). Apparently each midwife was unmarried at the time, which seems surprising, given the benefit that the experience of giving birth would presumably offer those serving as midwives. However, it seems that midwifery in the Henderson-Lushton area during the 1920s and 1930s was performed primarily by unmarried women who gave up the role when they married and started their own families.

Third and last, the older children were not sent off to a relative’s house but stayed at home through every birth. On the day Ruth was born, Daniel and Diet Quiring were helping Grandpa Chris cut ice on the West Fork of the Big Blue River (not far south of the farmstead, for those who remember the Lushton farm); the rest of the kids were in or around the house.

The reference to cutting ice evokes additional questions, of course, but that is a matter for another post. It is enough for now to have answers to our three questions, answers that demonstrate both the similarity of our family’s experience to what was described in Marlene Epp’s Mennonite Women in Canada: A History and several differences between what was the norm in other places and the birth practices in early twentieth-century central Nebraska.